Right Living 

Hoiner H. Ccoper 




Class. 






Book. 



Jsi^ 



c. 



Copyright]^?- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSnV 



RIGHT LIVING 



RIGHT LIVING 



Messages to Youth from Men 
Who Have Achieved 



Edited by 

HOMER H. COOPER, A. M. 

Superintendent of Spiceland Academy 




CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1914 



€*^ 



t 



i'l^ 



Copyright 
A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1914 



Published March, 1914 



MAR 30 1914 



3F. I^all PrattutQ (Eu.« (El^ltn^n 



0CLA3711O7 



To the 
STUDENTS OF SPICELAND ACADEMY 

And to my children 

LOWELL AND MIRIAM 

These messages are earnestly 
dedicated 



INTRODUCTION 



THE majority of these articles were written 
especially for the students of Spiceland Acad- 
emy; the remaining articles are from lectures, or 
books selected for this purpose. All may be con- 
sidered as messages to students and young people 
everywhere. 

It is impossible to have many of our leading 
men of power and influence come in direct per- 
sonal touch with our students here or elsewhere, 
but it is possible for the men and women who are 
moulding the views of the world to write or select 
a direct, personal, inspiring message or talk for 
them — and for all people. Our students need to 
have heart-to-heart talks with those whom the 
world delights to honor. In this one principle may 
be found the spirit of this book. 

The articles have been written or selected by 
our most eminent men regardless of creed or de- 
nomination. Practical and successful men and 
noble women have written what they considered 
would be of greatest value for students and young 
people to know. These messages cannot be found 
in textbooks. Learned in the great school of expe- 

vii 



viii Introduction 

rience, those who have been most truly successful 
in life have written these messages to help onward 
in the best possible way our young people in their 
life's journey — messages meant to inspire. They 
are the direct personal appeals of those who are 
intensely interested in the uplift of humanit3\ 
They are prepared by those who, understanding 
human nature, know what ought to be said, and 
know the way to speak and write interestingly 
and effectively. 

Textbooks are tools in life. Real life comes in 
the contact of one individual soul in its influence 
upon another. Real education is the preparation 
for life, and this is a preparation for service. In 
the regular grind of daily existence we sometimes 
forget, or do not even understand, what the things 
are that make life really worth while. The great 
majority of our young people want a more definite 
realization of what constitutes both the way and 
the end of a truly practical, sensible, successful life. 
For various reasons teachers and parents are not 
always able to reach the heart of a youth and guide 
or lead him in the better way. This book is meant 
to be of assistance to these young people, to teach- 
ers, and to parents. 

Many things not found in textbooks are taught 
in the schoolroom. The best part of a person's 
education is what abides in his life after the text- 
book is forgotten. Whether at home, at school, 



Introdtiction ix 

at work or at play, in countless contributing ways, 
everyone is being educated, is having character 
moulded, is having a destiny determined for good 
or evil. 

I am of the sincere belief that these special 
messages will prove an inspiration to many to hold 
worthy ideals and to have the courage to live the 
joyful life of worship and service. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Whole Duty of Man, Rev. 

John Haynes Holmes • . . 1 

II The Student^s Opportunities, 

Jeremiah W. Jenhs .... 5 

III The Kingdom of God in Human- 

ity, Charles R. Henderson , . 11 

IV Society and the College Gradu- 

ate, E. A, Ross 14« 

V Personal Standards in Life, Sen. 

Isidor Rayner .18 

VI Temptations, David Starr Jordan . 21 
VII Patriotism^ David Starr Jordan . 31 
VIII A Message from Socrates^ Rev. 

Jenkin Lloyd Jones . ... 32 
IX Life and Growth^ A. S. Isaacs, .. 41 
X Our Country^ Cardinal Gibbons 44 
XI A Motto for Life, Rev. Russell 

Cecil 52 

XII Young Folks and The State, 

J. Horace McFarland . . . . 55 
XIII The Iniquity of War, Rev. 

Charles A, Blanchard . . . . 61 
XIV Who Will Succeed, S, J. Jusse^ 

rand 74^ 

XV Do Right, Ben. B. Lindsey ... 74 
XVI Three Mottoes, George W. Dewey 75 
XVII The Use of Time, James Bryce . 75 
XVIII Responsibility of Citizenship, 

Sen, John D, Works .... 76 
xi 



..^^ 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX Your Better Self, John G. Hib- 

ben • . • . . 77 

XX A Morning Prayer, Rev. Frank 

JV. Gunsaulus 78 

XXI Aim At The Top, John P, D. John 79 
XXII The Fighter's Virtue — Subordi- 
nation, John H. Gibbons . . 80 
XXIII Law and Right in American Life, 

James M. Taylor 81 

XXIV Openmindedness, E, A. Alderman 82 
XXV The Pillars of the R;Epublic, 

Charles Scanlan 83 

XXVI Four Problems, Hamilton Holt . 84 
XXVII Four Things, Henry van Dyke . 85 
XXVIII Scouts, Ernest Thompson-Seton . 85 
XXIX Care of the Mind, Earl Barnes . 86 
XXX Do Your Best, Marion Harland . 88 
XXXI The Sons of Well-To-Do Par- 
ents, C. W, Fowler .... 89 
XXXII Ought and Duty, William Shaw 91 

XXXIII The Choice of Character, Gif- 

ford Pinchot 92 

XXXIV Self Exertion, Isaac Sharpless . 9S 
XXXV A Personal Memory of Lincoln, 

William C. St^ever . . . . 95 
XXXVI The Day of Opportunity, David 

G. Downey 97 

XXXVII The Ideal World, David W. Den- 
nis 99 

XXXVIII The Young Man and His Money, 

Rev. Charles R. Brown . . .108 
XXXIX Self-Satisfaction and Pity, T. JV*. 

Carver 114 

XL Wordsworth's Daffodils, William 

H. Maxwell 117 

XLI Some Duties of a Citizen, Mabel 

Boardman 118 



CONTENTS 



XUl 



CHAPTER 
XLII 

XLIII 

XLIV 

XLV 

XLVI 

XLVII 
XLVIII 

XLIX 

L 
LI 

LII 
LIII 

LIV 



LV 
LVI 

LVII 
LVIII 

LVIX 

LX 
LXI 

LXII 



PAGE 

The Gift op Knowledge, Evange- 
line Booth 122 

Students and Citizenship, John 
Burke 128 

Thinking and Doing, William A. 
Prendergast 137 

Elements of Success, Caleb 
Powers 138 

Masters of Destiny, Miles Poin- 
dexter 139 

Real Progress, Sen. G. W. N orris • 140 

Courage And Success, Eugene N. 
Foss 141 

The Object of Criminal Justice, 
Simeon E, Baldwin 142 

iWoRSHip AND Service, R. P. Smith 143 

The Main Thing, Rev. Charles M. 
Sheldon 144 

Upper Currents, Rev. J. R. Miller A4i5 

Importance of Character, John 
Cavanaugh 146 

Living Up to Your Highest Pos- 
sibilities Every Day, William 
G. Hubbard 147 

Be Strong, Rev. W. A. Quayle . .148 

" And They That Were Ready 
Went In," Robert J. Aley . .149 

The Plain Path, Mary E. Wooley 150 

On Making Life Attractive, 
Booker T. Washington . . .151 

Health and Happiness, Harvey 
Wiley , . . . 153 

Graduation, W. H. P. Faunce . .155 

How To Live the Real Life, 
Emerson Hough 156 

The Availability of Our Knowl- 
edge, Orison Swett Mar den . .159 



xiv * CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

LXIII A Word of Encouragement, Eu- 
gene Noble . 166 

LXIV Should I Go to College?, A, TV. 

Harris 167 

LXV The Larger Life, W. J. Bryan . 170 
LXVI The Value of an Idea, W. J. 

Bryan 175 

LXVII While in School, J. G. Schurman 176 
LXVIII The New Relations of the Stu- 
dent, Rev. Edwin H, Hughes . 183 
LXIX Preparation for an Effective 

Life, Charles W. Eliot . . .190 
LXX Socialism and Its Ideals, Eugene 

v. Debs 201 

LXXI Organized Labor, John Mitchell 203 
LXXII The Christian's Daily Life, Rev. 

J. Wilbur Chapman .... 207 
LXXIII Civic Religion, Rev. Stephen S. 

Wise 210 

LXXIV Spiritual Progress, William Allen 

White 217 

LXXV Efficiency and Preparation, W. 

E. Stone 219 

LXXVI A Christian Gentleman, W. H. 

Lews 222 

LXXVII The New Health Conscience, 

Walter H. Page 222 

LXXVIII The Choice of a Faith, Arthur T. 

Hadley 225 

LXXIX Conservation of Men, William P. 

Borland 2S0 

LXXX Health, Emily T, Robbins ... 238 
LXXXI Real Men, Benjamin Ide Wheeler 243 
LXXXII A New School Year, Nicholas 

Murray Butler 247 

LXXXIII Grow, Grow, Grow, Kenyon But- 

terfield 250 



CONTENTS XV 

CHAPTER PAGE 

LXXXIV The Direction op Social Pro- 
gress, Julian W. Mack . . .252 
LXXXV Science and Faith, Elmer E, 

Brown 260 

LXXXVI Why I Am an Optimist, Helen 

Keller 263 

LXXXVII Practical Day Dreams, Homer H. 

Cooper 269 



RIGHT LIVING 



THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN 

Rev. John Haynes Holmes^ Church of the 
Messiah, New York 

The question as to what is " the whole duty of 
man '' in this present life, is one which may be 
answered in different ways by different men. It 
is interesting to read the philosophical and theo- 
logical literature of the past, and see how various 
are the solutions which have been offered of this 
perennial problem. In spite of all divergences of 
interpretation and opinion, however, there seem 
to be certain principles which all great minds have 
accepted, in one form or another, as the basis of 
morals; and these principles, I believe, can be 
summed up, in a general way, under three heads. 

In the first place, it is our duty to know the 
truth. This principle means that we must not 
accept an idea because our fathers accept it, or 
because our friends and associates believe it, or 
because the church teaches it, or because it is a 

[1] 



Bight Living 

more or less vital part of the tradition of the race. 
The only ground upon which we have any right 
to accept any doctrine of politics or science or 
religion or social custom, is that it is true — and 
true not because we have been told it is true, but 
because we ourselves have found it to be true as 
a matter of observation and experiment. Ours 
must be the spirit of the scientist in his labora- 
tory, of the botanist in the fields, of the archaeolo- 
gist in the deserts of Egypt and Babylonia. In 
our search for knowledge, in our contact with the 
world, in our associations with our fellow men, we 
must never be satisfied with hearsay, or rumor, 
or tradition, or even majority opinion. We must 
seek to know the truth at first hand, and when 
we have found it, cling to it though it involve 
the sacrifice of all that we hold dear. " Truth," 
said the great English biologist, Thomas Huxley, 
at one of the most trying moments of his life, 
" truth is better than much profit. I have 
searched over the grounds of my belief, and if 
wife and child and name and fame were all to be 
lost to me, one after the other, as the penalty, 
still I will not lie.'* 

In the second place, it is our duty to do right. 
This principle means that we must do a thing, not 
because it seems to be profitable, nor even because 
it seems to be prudent and wise; but in the last 

[2] 



Messages to Youth 

analysis, simply and solely because it seems to 
be right. In all that we do, we must scrupulously 
avoid every selfish consideration of personal gain ; 
and always turn a deaf ear to the appeals of expe- 
diency. It is not our business, as living souls, to 
ask what is profitable or what is expedient. We 
must simply ask what is right ; and, when we have 
determined this, do the right though the heavens 
fall. To consult our own profit, which is selfish- 
ness, or to consult the world's profit, which is 
expediency, is to commit the unpardonable sin of 
selling our souls. I like the ancient story, which 
comes to us from Seneca, I believe, of the mariner 
who was caught in a great gale upon the open sea. 
As his ship was driven before the hurricane and 
seemed every moment upon the point of foundering 
beneath the waves, we are told that the sailor 
prayed, " Neptune, thou mayest save me, if 
thou wilt, or thou mayest drown me. But, 
whether or no, I will hold my rudder true.'' 

Lastly, it is our duty to love the good. At first 
sight, this may seem to be the same thing as to do 
the right; but, as a matter of fact, it is more and 
better. Let me illustrate: When I was a small 
boy in school, I had a teacher at one time who 
used to make trial of her pupils in a peculiar way. 
Towards the close of an afternoon session, she 
would say to three boys, whom we will call Tom, 

[3] 



Right Ldving 

Dick, and Harry, " Boys, I want you to stay 
after school today, and clean this big blackboard." 
And then she would draw two long chalk marks 
down the board, dividing it into three equal spaces, 
one for each boy. Now, Tom oftentimes would 
forget or disobey, and go home without doing his 
share of the work! .Dick would clean his third 
of the blackboard, and thus do the right. But 
Harry would not only clean his share of the 
board, but, seeing Tom's third still covered with 
chalk marks, he would clean that, too, without any 
request from the teacher. Harry, in other words, 
not only did the right, which was doing what his 
teacher told him to do, but he was so anxious to 
see the blackboard all cleaned off that he did more 
than his teacher asked him to do — namely, cleaned 
Tom's share as well as his own. This boy, that is, 
not only did the right, but he loved the good, and 
thus did more than right. Now here is a sugges- 
tion as to what we must do in the daily walks of 
life. We must love the good, by which I mean 
that we must go outside the narrow borders of our 
own existence, and seek to make this a better 
world for all people to live in. We must be willing 
not only to make ourselves righteous, but to sacri- 
fice ourselves, if need be, for the sake of the greater 
happiness and welfare of humanity. All the great 
servants of the race have been men who did some- 

[4] 



Messages to Youth 

thing more than merely do the right. They hated 
evil and loved good so much that they forgot 
all about themselves, and sought only to uplift 
and benefit the world. The Pharisees did the right. 
But Jesus loved the good, and therefore laid down 
his life " as a ransom for many." 

Here now, as I see it, is the whole duty of man 
' — to know the truth, to do the right, to love the 
good. These " do, and thou shalt live." 



THE STUDENT'S OPPORTUNITIES 

Jeremiah W. Jenks^ New York University 

It would be well if students were to take a busi- 
nesslike view of their school and college life. When 
you buy clothes or ride on trains or go to a base- 
ball game or engage rooms and board, you try, 
sometimes unsuccessfully, of course, to get your 
money's worth. That 's business. In school or 
college, if you count your tuition and the time that 
you are spending — and your time at any rate 
ought to be worth something — you are expend- 
ing each day a considerable sum of money to buy 
an education. It would be a good plan if each of 
you were to figure up what your total expenses 

[5] 



Right Living 

are on the average each week of your student 
year, then note how many hours you are in class- 
rooms each week, and see how much you pay for 
each hour that you are with your professors. You 
have a right to get your money's worth each hour. 
It may well be that one professor is worth more 
than another, but the average should at least be 
up to what you are paying. As a matter of fact 
you are probably costing your institution consid- 
erably more than you are paying. What efforts 
are you making to get your money's worth? Do 
not be content with letting your teachers pour out 
words, wise or foolish as the case may be. You 
should get more than words. You should get 
more than dull questions. You should get infor- 
mation, inspiration, education. 

Education has often been defined as a process 
of drawing out, of development, the thought being 
that things were to be drawn out of the student's 
mind by suggestion in order that it might develop 
with the process. But, from your viewpoint as 
business men, your education ought also to be in 
part a drawing of what you can get out of the 
professor's mind, if he has anything worth while 
in it. This is not a matter merely of receiving, 
it is giving and taking. Your education should 
mean the awakening of your powers of observation 
and reasoning by the friction of mind on mind, 

[6] 



Messages to Youth 

through free questioning and discussion. Your 
development will mean the kindling in you of the 
fires of desire for knowledge, of enthusiasm for 
the noble and true, of determination for the per- 
formance of duty. See to it that the professors 
accomplish this end. If you do not, you are not 
doing your part. 

But, again, you are not doing your part, if, 
when you enter the class-room, you are not fully 
equipped for making the best use of your teach- 
er's time. If a lesson has been assigned in ad- 
vance and you are not prepared, you are wasting 
both your own time and that of your teacher. 
What is of still more consequence, you are wasting 
the time of your fellow students. Have you any 
moral right to do that? Your fellows have also 
paid their money. They are entitled to their 
money's worth. Would it be any worse for you 
to deprive your fellow students of money coming 
to them than, through your carelessness and lack 
of preparation, to deprive them of the knowledge 
and the training and the inspiration that they have 
paid for? Consider not merely your rights as a 
business man but also the business rights of your 
fellows. Be honest, not merely to yourself, but 
to them also. 

But how are you going to judge your money's 
worth? What will you demand? What is worth 

[7] 



Right Living 

your while? Only something that is to help make 
money? That, of course, is important. I sup- 
pose that nine-tenths of the time of most of 
us is given to making money. We must earn a 
living. You must not fail in that. Study well 
all of the steps that will fit you for your life work, 
that will help you earn your living, whether 
your profession be law or medicine, teaching, man- 
ufacturing, merchandising, or — if through good 
or ill fortune you do not need to make a living, 
devotion to the public welfare, service to your fel- 
low men. But do n't make the miserable mistake 
of thinking that the money-making part of your 
life is by any means all. The work of the univer- 
sity should take direct hold on life. But what is 
life? Eating, drinking, clothing, costly amuse- 
ments ? That is little. I remember a student say- 
ing to me two or three years ago, " Let me get 
money and I will buy pleasure." But you can't 
buy pleasure of the highest type unless you have 
the capacities for higher enjoyment. This young 
man enjoyed a ragtime tune, but he could not 
appreciate the beauty of a symphony by Beetho- 
ven. He had not developed his capacities in that 
direction. You may not have much time for lit- 
erature, but you should at any rate have one or 
a few friends among the great authors. Keep 
near you a work of Shakespeare or Emerson or 

[8] 



Messages to Youth 

Bacon or Carlyle or Lowell or the Bible, in which 
you can find the thoughts of at least one great 
thinker who saw life deep and true and its reali- 
ties, and who will enable you to see the real sig- 
nificance of life. Within a week, in conversation 
with one of the half-dozen leading business men of 
America, he told me that he had been re-reading 
Job, and he spoke with enthusiasm not only of the 
literary power of that wonderful masterpiece, but 
of the grip that the ancient writer showed on the 
realities of life. 

We are sometimes inclined to envy the wealthy 
their power to buy great pictures and rare stat- 
uary, but each one of us, if he is observant and 
notes the beautiful things about him, may carry 
in his memory, in his mind's eye, pictures more 
beautiful than can be painted. One of the wisest 
sayings that I have ever heard of the great teach- 
ers is, "Everyone should look for a beautiful 
thing in life each day." It can always be found 
— perhaps in a flower, in a picture, in a passing 
face, in the smile of a friend. 

Best of all is our touch with one another. We 
are living in a society of men and women, we are 
part of it. Nothing is so precious in life as 
friendships and personal loyalties. Among you 
are many choice souls. Each one of you should 
seek them out and make close friendships. It was 

[9] 



Bight Living 

in my college days that I made friends on whom 
today I rely as upon no others. One must be care- 
ful when choosing his friends. Some characters 
always ring true. Do n't chum with a trickster or 
a liar or a foul-mouthed or foul-minded man. Such 
people may be amusing for a time, but as the years 
go by coarse wit stales; only noble thoughts are 
worth while ; only truth counts. 

We must remember, too, that all civilization is 
built on the daily work of the common man. Every 
man's life has a public side. A few years ago my 
neighbor inquired of me what color I was to paint 
my house, saying that she who had to look on the 
house from the outside was more interested in its 
external appearance than I who lived on the in- 
side. I have no more moral right to torture my 
neighbors by personal habits and to offend their 
sensibilities of sight or hearing, than wilfully to 
tread on their toes or to cuff their ears. 

A great building costing several millions of dol- 
lars is being erected in New York. Its builders 
are proposing to spend hundreds of thousands of 
dollars merely in making the building beautiful, 
attractive to the public beyond its power of im- 
mediate financial return. This is the right public 
spirit. Think of the world education that has 
sprung from the Campanile of St. Mark's in 
Venice, or from the Cathedral at Cologne, not to 

[10] 



Messages to Youth 

mention some of our own great architectural treas- 
ures of equal rank. 

Do your work ; get your wealth, if you can hon- 
estly; train your brains; but remember that the 
most precious things in life, those that add the 
greatest enjoyment and that will enable you to 
render the greatest service, are not to be bought 
with money. They are to come from the cultiva- 
tion of your tastes, the ennobling of your char- 
acter, and the giving of service to your fellow 
men. 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN HUMANITY 

Charles R. Henderson, Professor^ University of 
Chicago 

Mrs. E. B. Browning, in Italy and the World, 
sings of the universal fatherland of the human 
race : 

No more Jew or Greek then — taunting 
Nor taunted; no more England or France; 
But one confederate brotherhood^ planting 
One flag only^ to mark the advance, 
Onward and upward, of all humanity. 

For fully developed Christianity 
Is civilization perfected. 
And to love best shall still be to reign 
unsurpassed. 

[11] 



Right Living 

Friendship is started in the nursery of partic- 
ular small groups, as in the family and the neigh- 
borhood. There the roots develop power of 
assimilation before the tender shoot can bear 
transplanting into a larger space and grow alone. 
Some vegetables require a hothouse for their first 
attempts at living, before the frost is out of the 
air and soil. 

That form of friendship we call patriotism is 
connected with a restricted region and its natural 
fortunes. The Scotchman loves the purple heather 
of his ragged and craggy mountains. The Hol- 
landers dream of slow moving canals and wind- 
mills. The Swiss carry afar pictures of lofty 
Mont Blanc and the eternal snows of the Jungfrau. 
And we Americans sing : 

I love thy rocks and rills. 
Thy woods and templed hills. 

Nor should we ever forget these little groups 
and these special regions. He who does not love 
and reverence his own parents is a poor citizen ; and 
a renegade or traitor to his own country is not 
an honorable cosmopolite. 

When immigrants pour into America from all 
nations of Europe, we do not ask them to forget 
their folk songs and dances, the sacred prayers of 
their ancestors, and all that Is venerable and beau- 

[12] 



Messages to Youth 

tiful to them. They are not good Americans who 
forget their country and their kind. Those are 
good Americans who bring the best of all lands 
with them, and learn to tolerate each other and 
be just and fair and kind to all. 

But there is growing up a larger sentiment of 
humanity which refuses to find in the stranger a 
natural enemy, and to regard competition and 
suspicion between nations as anything more than 
a proof of narrowness to be outgrown as rapidly 
as possible. 

This is Christianity — universal friendship, the 
genuine belief that all spirits have their heredity 
from the Supreme Father of all. Lord of life. 
Ruler of sky, plain and the vast unseen beyond 
our horizon. 

The vision of the federation of mankind which 
we cherish is not one of conquest. It is a kingdom 
ruled by a good King; it is a democracy in which 
all the people are governed by the inward law of 
love and justice and reason. "And to love best 
shall still be to reign unsurpassed.'' 

Jesus taught this in his profound words : " He 
that is greatest among you shall be the servant 
of all." The proud world thinks of the man who 
owns slaves or drives serfs or controls wage earn- 
ers as greatest; but not so the Christ, Lord of 
all, who " came not to be ministered unto but to 

[13] 



Bight Living 

minister." He alone is Christlike who aids hu- 
manity to move onward and upward. 

It is true each of us alone is feeble, poor, and 
powerless to achieve. But then we have no right 
to work and live alone. We multiply our energies 
by combinations, by institutions to which multi- 
tudes contribute. Selfishness is not only wicked 
but weak and foolish. The egotist who thinks to 
do all the great deed alone, and win all the fame 
of it by his own right hand, is soon deserted and 
dies of thirst in the lonely desert which he has 
made empty about him. The really great men, 
like Gladstone, Wilberforce, Lincoln, made com- 
mon cause with the slave, the workman, the strug- 
gling nation. 

With deed^ and word and pen 
Thou hast served thy fellow men ; 
Therefore art thou exalted. 

SOCIETY AND THE COLLEGE GRADU- 
ATE 

E. A. RosSy Professor^ University of Wisconsin 

Once you have risen above the money monoma- 
nia of our time and discerned the satisfying goals 
of life, there are two courses open to you. The 
first alternative is a career of silent protest. You 
may clearly see the desolation and moral decay 

[14] 



Messages to Youth 

that attend on unscrupulous success. You may 
spurn the temptation to misuse our laws and in- 
stitutions and come to the top by availing yourself 
of the loopholes in our social organization. You 
may live up to the right standards and content 
yourself with the limited success that comes to 
him who plays fair against rivals who stick at 
nothing, yet you may refrain from raising a pro- 
testing voice. Reforming and improving are too 
unpleasant. They mean dust, sweat, and grime. 
They will get you into trouble and hard knocks 
and splattering with mud. They will require you 
to work with all sorts of people, draw you into 
the " filthy pool of politics." You may therefore 
say to yourself " Go to ! I will keep myself ut- 
terly pure." 

It seems to me there is something mean and 
craven in thus slipping through the world like a 
coward or spy. Such negative virtues will never 
stamp out crying evils nor keep our institutions 
free from being undermined. Does it beseem a 
free and able-bodied man always to pick the smooth 
and shady path and leave to others the flinty road 
and the burden and heat of the day ? Is it manly 
to enjoy life and coolly leave others to crack their 
heart strings in the effort to keep life endurable.'^ 

No, the better policy is to observe the strict 
rules of the game and compel others to observe 

[15] 



Bight Living 

them. Turn in your own property to the assessor 
and do all you can to make the tax dodgers turn 
in theirs. Obey the laws and make all the trouble 
you can for those who flout them. Respect the 
close season for game, but acknowledge no close 
season for those who break the game laws. Go 
out and do battle against Fraud and Chicane. Do 
not take the world as you find it. Take hold to 
make it better. I admire the man who hits straight 
between the eyes the thug who interferes with his 
rights in the primary, or breaks an ink well on the 
head of the corrupt chairman whose rulings are 
foul and treacherous. All honor to those citizens 
who displayed a coil of rope before the bribed 
councilmen who were about to vote away a valua- 
ble franchise. Be no Miss Nancy, for some of the 
people you will have to deal with no more deserve 
exemption from rough handling than the footpad 
or the burglar. 

But you cannot play the part of the champion 
without cost. You cannot serve yourself so well 
if you undertake to do something for the common- 
wealth. Silence and compliance are the rose 
strewn paths. " Steep and craggy," said Por- 
phyry, " is the path of the gods." There is no 
pay nor honor in standing up for the laws. The 
schemers and tricksters and boodlers will mark 
you out and make you pay dearly for disturbing 

[16] 



Messages to Youth 

their little game. You will lose in income, in prop- 
erty, in professional standing, in political pre- 
ferment, in social position. 

And what will you have to show for it all? 
Well, for one thing, these institutions you love and 
revere will through you endure. They are not 
dead nor doomed. They have not become obsolete. 
Men, not gods, are destroying them. Men, not 
gods, must save them. If you, their natural de- 
fenders, rally and fight for them, they will trans- 
mit your work to distant generations. Escaping 
the pettiness of individual aims, you will have 
identified yourself with a great, substantial, and 
durable object affecting vast numbers of human 
beings. 

Besides that, you will have lived like a man. You 
will have triumphed over the limitations of date 
and place, and become one of those universal men, 
who have been able under adverse conditions to 
create for themselves a balanced and normal life. 

We know nothing of the solid citizens of Greece 
2200 years ago, who dwelt in marble mansions, 
lived delicately, fared sumptuously, and were car- 
ried about in litters by troops of slaves. They 
and their successors are forgotten. But the world 
still talks of a beggar who ate crusts, drank water 
from his hands, wore rags, slept in a tub, and who 
preserved to the last his bluntness and independ- 

[17] 



Right Living 

ence. The world remembers Diogenes the Cynic. 
For rude, squalid, arrogant, Diogenes was after 
all a man. 

Now, wherever you live, whatever your fortune, 
it is possible for you, by disdaining the hobbies 
and idols of your age and land, to play the part 
of a wise, brave and free man, such that the great 
souls of all times and peoples, could they meet 
you, would hail you as their brother. There is no 
call for you to become a prophet, a philosopher, 
or a knight. Yet we need just the sort of man 
that in Israel became a prophet, in Greece a philos- 
opher and in the middle ages a knight. For these, 
withstanding the follies of the hour, and putting 
beneath their feet the prejudices and illusions of 
their people, played the part of the true men as 
their time and place required. See that here and 
now you meet the test as well as Hosea or Socrates 
or Sir Galahad met it. 



PERSONAL STANDARDS IN LIFE 

Isidor Raynery Senator from Maryland 

There are many subjects that arise in my mind 
that might deserve consideration, but as this re- 
sponse must be brief, I will select a few reflections 
which have crossed my thoughts frequently and 

[18] 



Messages to Youth 

have been of great aid to me in my contact with 
my fellow men. 

First. I think the principal safeguard in our 
lives is truth. There can be no such thing as 
character without truth, and it lies at the founda- 
tion of and forms the essence of every pure and 
good life. Untruthfulness if it does not embrace 
yet it covers every vice, and truthfulness if it does 
not comprise yet it adorns every virtue. In the 
hioral training of a child I would instill into it the 
precept and the principle of telling the truth no 
matter what wrong it exposes or what misconduct 
it brings to light. An untruth to hide or conceal 
a wrong is a greater crime than the wrong itself. 
Even a criminal can be easily reformed if he will 
only tell the truth, but there is no hope for a per- 
son who is deceitful, evasive, treacherous, or un- 
truthful. As the river flows from its source so a 
great deal of the vice and crime that afflicts society 
can be traced to the impure and contaminated 
fountain of falsehood. I would therefore instill 
into every young mind the lesson of truthfulness ; 
in business, in professional and public life, it will 
be an unerring guide in the path to an honorable 
and useful career. 

Second. In the next place, one of the most 
commendable virtues to practice is self sacrifice 
for others. The life of a selfish person living prin- 

[19] 



Bight Living 

cipally to amuse himself without regard to the 
rights or feelings of others is a thoughtless and 
heartless person. Self denial, unselfishness, self 
sacrifice, are broad terms, but in a thousand differ- 
ent ways they afford opportunities in everyone's 
life to do so much good and bestow so niuch happi- 
ness that I think no character can be perfect with- 
out them. The noblest characters in the world to 
me are those self-sacrificing men and women who 
upon various walks of life quietly, and without 
any exhibition or publicity, are surrendering the 
pleasures and luxuries of life so as to help others 
who are in want of its comforts and necessities. 
Their life is a mission work in behalf of humanity. 
Third. There is one other thought I will give 
expression to. We can hardly overestimate the 
result if we make up our minds every day to do 
one practical good deed that will be of material 
help to those who need sympathy and assistance. 
At night, when the day's battle is over, it is a 
comforting thought, and one that sends a thrill of 
joy through our hearts to feel that we have at 
least in one instance relieved the wants of poverty, 
alleviated the pangs of suffering, or come to the 
aid of those who in their lonesome sorrow and dis- 
tress have no one except strangers to appeal to. 
All the pleasure that we can partake of, all the 
accomplishments of ambition, all the popularity we 

[20] 



Messages to Youth 

may achieve, pale into insignificance at the throne 
of our conscience when compared with some gen- 
uine act of charity that we have extended along 
the paths of human sorrow. Just think of it, if 
this is done every day, how much it means in a 
year, and how immeasurable may be the benefits 
that may ensue from it. 

These are some of the few standards, truth, self- 
sacrifice and charity, that I would impress upon 
the rising generation. Success in life will surely 
follow whatever may be our calling or vocation, 
and, if we do meet with reverses and failures, we 
Have these greatest bulwarks to fall back upon; 
and in the hours of despondency and depression 
when this world's treasures and idols are vanishing 
before us, we can rely upon them for our defense, 
and a life thus spent will point with hope and in- 
spiration to the future as true as the needle is to 
the pole. 



TEMPTATIONS 

Dr. David Starr Jordan 

The short cuts to happiness which temptation 
commonly offers to you and me, I may roughly 
divided into five classes. 

[21] 



Right Living 

I. Indolence. This is the attempt to secure 
the pleasures of rest without the effort that justi- 
fies rest and makes it welcome. When a man 
shuns effort, he is in no position to resist tempta- 
tion. So, through all the ages, idleness has been 
known as the parent of all vices. " Life drives him 
hard '' who has nothing in the world to do. It is 
said that " the very fiends weaves ropes of sand, 
rather than face pure hell in idleness." 

II. Gambling. In all its forms gambling is 
the desire to get something for nothing. Burglary 
and larceny have the same motive. Along this line, 
the difference between gambling and stealing is 
one fixed by social customs and prejudices. The 
thief may be a welcome member of society if he is 
the right kind of a thief, and successful in keeping 
within the rules we have adopted for our game of 
social advancement. In society, money is power. 
It is the visible representation of stored up power, 
whether of ourselves or of others. It is said that 
" the love of money is the root of all evil." The 
love of money is the love of power. But it is not 
true that the love of power is the root of all evil. 
To love power is natural to the strong. To wish 
for money is natural for him who knows how to use 
it. The desire to get money without earning it is 
the root of all evil. Only evil comes through the 
search for unearned power. To get something for 

[22] 



Messages to Youth 

nothing, In whatever way, demoralizes effort. The 
appeal to chance, the spirit of speculation, what- 
ever form it may take, is adverse to individual 
prosperity. It makes for personal degeneration 
and therefore for social decay. 

III. Licentiousness. More widespread and 
more insidious than the quest for unearned power 
is the search for the unearned pleasures of love, 
without love's duties or love's responsibilities. The 
way to unearned love lies through the valley of 
the shadow of death. The path is white with dead 
men's bones. 

Just as honest love is the most powerful Influ- 
ence for good that can enter into a man's life, so 
is love's counterfeit the most disintegrating. Love 
is a sturdy plant of vigorous growth, with won- 
drous promise of flower and fruitage, but It will 
not spring from the ashes of lust. 

In the economy of human life, love looks for- 
ward to the future. Its glory Is In Its altruism. 
The mother gives her life and strength to the care 
of the child, and to the building of the home. The 
father stands guard over the life and welfare of 
mother and child alike. To shirk responsibility 
Is to destroy the home. The equal marriage de- 
mands equal purity of heart, and equal chastity 
of Intention. Not strife nor war nor hatred Is 
love's greatest enemy. Love's arch foe Is lust. To 

[23] 



Right Living 

shirk the bonds of love for the irresponsible joys 
of lust is the DeviPs choicest temptation. Open 
vice brings with it a certainty of disease and deg- 
radation. To associate with the vile is to assume 
their vileness, and this in no occult or metaphorical 
sense, either. Secret vice comes to the same end, 
but all the more surely, because the folly of lying 
is added to the other agencies of decay. The man 
who tries to lead a double life is either a neurotic 
freak, or else the prince of fools. Generally 
he is something of both at first, and at last 
an irreclaimable scoundrel. 

" Even the angels," Emerson says, " must re- 
spect the proprieties. '^ The basis of the pro- 
prieties of social life is that no man should shrink 
from the cost of that which he desires. To touch 
a woman's hand in wantonness may be to poison 
her life and yours. The strongest forces of human 
life are not subjects for idle play. The real heart 
and soul of a man are measured by the truth he 
shows a woman. A man's ideal of womanhood is 
fixed by the woman he seeks. By a man's ideal of 
womanhood we know the degree of his manhood. 
The word flirtation covers a multitude of sins. 
To breathe the aroma of love, in pure selfishness, 
without an atom of altruistic responsibility, is the 
motive of flirtation. 

IV. Precocity. In the hotbed of modem so- 
[24] 



Messages to Youth 

ciety there is a tendency to precocious growth. 
What is worth having must bide its time. To seize 
it before its time is to pluck it prematurely. It 
may be that " boys will be boys '' as people say, 
but if boys will be boys in a bad sense, they never 
will be men. The gauntlet of obscene suggestions 
in our cities is one of the most terrible our children 
have to face. Vulgarity has in some measure its 
foundation in precocity. It is an expression of 
arrested development in matters of good taste or 
good character. To be vulgar is to do that which 
is not the best of its kind. It is to do poor things 
in poor ways, and be satisfied with that. Vul- 
garity weakens the mind, and thus brings all other 
weaknesses in its train. It is vulgar to wear dirty 
linen when one is not engaged in dirty work. It 
is vulgar to like poor music, to read weak books, 
to feed on sensational newspapers, to trust to pat- 
ent medicines, to find amusement in trashy novels, 
to enjoy vulgar theaters, to find pleasure in cheap 
jokes, to tolerate coarseness and looseness in any 
of its myriad forms. We find the corrosion of 
vulgarity everywhere, and its poison enters every 
home. The billboards of cities are covered with 
its evidences, our newspapers are redolent with it, 
our story books reek with it, our schools are 
tainted by it, and we cannot keep it out of our 
homes, or our churches, or our colleges. It is in 

[25] 



Right LdVing 

democracy, the training of the common man, that 
we can find the permanent antidote to vulgarity. 
The second power of vulgarity is obscenity, and 
this vice is like the pestilence. Wherever it finds 
lodgment it kills. It fills the mind with vile pic- 
tures, which will come up again and again, stand- 
ing in the way of all healthful effort. Those who 
have studied the life history of the homeless poor 
tell us that obscenity, and not drink, is the primal 
cause of the ineffectiveness of most of them. The 
open door of the saloon makes it a center of cor- 
rosion. The resistance to temptation must come 
from within. So far as the drink of the drunkards 
is concerned, prohibition does not prohibit. But 
to clean up a town, to free it from corrosion, saves 
men, and boys and girls, too, from vice, and who 
shall say that moral sanitation is not as much the 
duty of the community as physical sanitation. 
The city of the future will not permit the existence 
of slums and dives and tippling-houses. It will 
prohibit their existence for the same reason that it 
now prohibits pig-pens, dung-hills and cess-pools. 
For where all these things are, slums and cess- 
pools, saloons and pig-pens, there people grow 
weak and die. 

A form of vulgarity is profanity. This is the 
sign of a dull, coarse, unrefined nature. It is not 
that profanity is offensive to God. He may deal 

[26] 



Messages to Youth 

with it in His own way. It is offensive to man and 
destructive to him. It hurts the man who uses it. 
" What cometh out of a man, that defileth him,'' 
and the man thus defiled extends his corrosion to 
others. 

V. Intemperance. The basis of intemperance is 
the effort to secure through drugs the feeling of 
happiness when happiness does not exist. Men 
destroy their nervous system for the tingling pleas- 
ures they feel as its structures are torn apart. 
There are many drugs which cause pleasure, and 
in proportion to the delight they seem to give is 
the real mischief they work. Some phase of men- 
tal unsoundness is the natural effect of any of 
these drugs called stimulants or narcotics. Alco- 
hol gives a feeling of warmth or vigor or exhilara- 
tion, when the real warmth or vigor or exhilaration 
does not exist. Tobacco gives a feeling of rest 
which is not restfulness. The use of opium seems 
to intensify the imagination, giving its clumsy 
wings a wondrous power of flight. It destroys 
the sense of time and space, but it is in time and 
space that man has his being. Cocaine gives a 
strength which is not strength. Strychnine 
quickens the motor response which follows sensa- 
tion. Coffee and tea, like alcohol, enable one to 
borrow from his future store of force for present 
purposes, and none of these make any provision 

[27] 



Right Living 

for paying back the loan. One and all, these 
various drugs tend to give an impression of a 
power or a pleasure, or an activity, which we do 
not possess. One and all, their function is to force 
the nervous system to lie. One and all, the result 
of their habitual use is to render the nervous sys- 
tem incapable of ever telling the truth. One and 
all, their supposed pleasures are followed by a 
reaction of subjective pains as spurious and as 
unreal as the pleasures which they follow. Each 
of them, if used to excess, brings in time insanity, 
incapacity, and death. With each of them, the 
first use makes the second easier. To yield to 
temptation, makes it easier to yield again. The 
weakening effect on the will is greater than the in- 
jury to the body. In fact, the harm alcohol and 
similar excesses do to the body is wholly secondary. 
It is the visible reflex of the harm already done to 
the nervous system. 

While all this is true, I do not wish to take an 
extreme position. I do not care to sit in judgment 
on the tired woman with her cup of tea, the work- 
man with his pipe or glass of beer. A glass of 
claret sometimes may help digestion by a trick on 
the glands of the stomach. A cup of coffee may 
give an apparent strength we greatly need. A 
good cigar may soothe the nerves. A bottle of 
cool beer on a hot day may be refreshing. A 

[28] 



Messages to Youth 

white He oils the hinges of society. These things 
are the white lies of physiology. 

I make no attack on the use of claret at dinner, 
or beer as a medicine. That is a matter of taste. 
Each of these drugs leaves a scar on the nerves ; 
a small scar, if you please, and we cannot go 
through the battle of life without many scars of 
one kind or another. Moderate drinking is not so 
very bad, so long as it stays moderate. It is much 
like moderate lying — or, to use Beecher's words, 
" Like beefsteak with incidental arsenic." It will 
weaken you somewhat, and maybe you are strong 
enough for that. 

But whatever you may think or do as to table 
drinking, the use of beer, coffee or the like, there 
is no question as to the evil of perpendicular 
drinking, or drinking for drink's sake. Men who 
drink in saloons do so for the most part for the 
wrench on the nervous system. They drink to 
forget. They drink to be happy. They drink 
to be drunk. Sometimes it is a periodical attack 
of madness. Sometimes it is a chronic thirst. 
Whichever it is, its indulgence destroys the sound- 
ness of life, it destroys accuracy of thought and 
action; it destroys faith and hope and love. It 
brings a train of subjective horrors, which the ter- 
rified brain cannot interpret, and which we call 
delirium tremens. Private employers dare not 

[29] 



Right Living 

trust their business to the man who drinks. The 
great corporations dare not. He is not wanted on 
the railroads. The steamship lines have long since 
cast him off. The banks dare not use him. He 
cannot keep accounts. Only the people, long suf- 
fering and generous, remain as his resource. For 
this reason, municipal govelnment is his specialty ; 
and while this patience of the people lasts, our 
cities will breed scandals as naturally as our 
swamps breed malaria. 

It is not for you, taking Kipling's words, " with 
all your life's work to be done, that you must needs 
go dancing down the devil's swept and garnished 
causeway, because forsooth there is a light 
woman's smile at the end of it." It is not 
for you to seek strength by hazard or chance. 
Power has its price, and its price is straight 
effort. 

It is not for you to seek pleasure and strength 
in drugs whose only function is to deceive you, 
whose gifts of life are not so real as your own face 
in the glass. 

It is not for you to believe that idleness brings 
rest, or that unearned rest brings pleasure. You 
are young men and strong, and it is for you to 
resist corrosion, and to help stamp it out of civil- 
ised society. 

He is the strong man who can say NO. He is 
[30] 



Messages to Youth 

the wise man, who, for all his life, can keep mind 
and soul and body clean. 

— From The Strength of Being Clean^ 
American Unitarian Association, 



PATRIOTISM 

Dr. David Starr Jordan 

True patriotism has nothing to do with the war 
spirit. It is a matter of life and work to make the 
lives of others better. To respond to the drum is 
not patriotism. The patriot is not the soldier of 
fortune. The patriot is the man who loves his 
country, who believes in what his nation stands 
for, and who will give his life if necessary, that his 
nation may stand for righteousness. The martial 
spirit belongs to the medieval world, when fighting 
was the chief business of men, and when plunder 
was the chief motive for fighting, as it has been 
through all the ages. The growth of science, the 
development of invention, the spread of religion 
are all bound up in the maintenance of peace. 
Virility depends upon struggle, the struggle 
against the evils of the world and the condition of 
life. It is in no waj dependent on drums and 
flags, nor on the killing of men either individually 
or collectively. War was once universal. We have 

[31] 



Right Living 

driven it to the boundaries of nations. We have 
made it illegal everywhere else. We have made it 
so costly that its continuance means national ruin. 
The whole world is still paying bills incurred by 
Napoleon, Bismarck, and the timber thieves and 
promoters in Eastern Siberia. Just as baronial 
wars, religious wars, feudal wars, inquisitions, cru- 
sades, and coats of mail vanished when people saw 
them with clear vision, so international wars will 
come to an end, all of a sudden, when the people 
see them as they are. That time has now come, 
and only the money that is in it to the builders 
and promoters keeps in existence the standing 
armies and navies of today. 



A MESSAGE FROM SOCRATES 

Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Chicago 

There is on earth today no towering spire or 
stately cathedral to commemorate the name of Soc- 
rates. No conquering armies have gone forth 
bearing his banners in the "name of the Lord," 
and still the name of Socrates is a name that lures 
the young, satisfies the aged, inspires the faltering, 
and rebukes the wayward. The story of Socrates 
is the story of civilization, written clear and brief, 
the triumph of one rising out of obscurity into 

[32] 



Messages to Youth 

power, the triumph over difficulty into peace, the 
triumph of victory over death. 

Socrates was born of humble lineage — his 
father a stone cutter, his mother a visiting nurse, 
he himself reared in his youth in the marble-cut- 
ter's shop. But there bloomed in his heart an ap- 
preciation of things more excellent, and he became 
the unconfessed leader of the youths of the city, 
the unfrocked bishop of restless souls, the inspirer 
and comforter of those who sought the right, to 
the terror and dismay of the selfish. So persist- 
ently did he speak the truth, of faithful living, of 
honest speech, of kindly service, of devout inspira- 
tion, that they who had climbed to power on the 
ladder of greed and intrigue, they who would fain 
sway the forces of government to their own inter- 
est, became so distressed, so abashed, so uneasy, 
that they sought, as unholy power always seeks, 
to suppress and finally to remove this cause of their 
disgrace. You know the story of the thirty ty- 
rants who assumed to rule Athens, and who found 
this once friend of youth, this once simple, honest 
man, who on street corners challenged the con- 
sciences of those about him, and so exposed hypoc- 
risy and disclosed the motives of the ambitious 
and tyrannical that he became unbearable. He 
was sentenced to death, and he met that death in 
the spirit that put the hemlock cup forever along- 

[33] 



Bight Living 

side of the Cross, and makes the martyr of Athens 
companion with the martyr of Calvary. I speak 
no disrespect to Him who bore the Cross in Geth- 
semane, when I say that there stands alongside of 
Him on the mount of self-sacrifice, in the light 
of centuries' adoration and love, the homely, un- 
pretentious, unsupported, and for the time being 
apparently friendless Greek — Socrates. 

It is not necessary to enter into the details of 
this life. Unfortunately, or perhaps otherwise, 
few details are given; few details are necessary. 
His method was the simple method of conversation. 
He was a schoolmaster without a school, who 
found his pupils on the sidewalk and in the market 
place. He was a priest without a parish, who 
found his audiences wherever young men sought 
to spend their time and direct their lives. He was 
a mayor without a city, who dictated the condi- 
tions that out-ranked and out-ruled those in au- 
thority. He was a general without an army, who 
conquered without weapons and triumphed over 
organization. 

It would be interesting to pick up one after 
another of the conversations that have been saved 
to us, or preserved for us, by one of his disciples, 
Xenophon, in that beautiful classic of the soul, 
the Memorabilia, Sometimes I wonder and regret 
that our Greek teachers think it wise to start the 

[34] 



Messages to Youth 

amateur student, the beginner in Greek, on the 
other work of Xenophon, the Anabasis^ which tells 
the story of conquering and aggressive warfare, 
rather than the story of that other book, the 
Memorabilia^ in phrases, I must think equally 
clear, in Greek equally limpid, in sentences equally 
grammatical, which would set forth the life of this 
helper of youths. I am no teacher of Greek — 
they have their good reasons doubtless, but I am 
wondering whether a better estimation of the value 
of language study, in a more profound apprecia- 
tion of the classic world, the time is not coming 
when the Memorabilia and not the Anabasis will 
be the commonplace in the hands of the youth who 
seek to acquaint themselves with that most mar- 
velous of languages, that most delightful of clas- 
sics. Be that as it may, I cannot give you the 
the interesting content of the book, and the charm- 
ing story that comes of how he pricked the con- 
sciences, exposed the arrogance, criticized the 
unwise, and showed the better way to the truth 
seekers. 

Perhaps the most interesting pupil among the 
young men who gathered around this homely 
stone-cutter, was the youth Euthydemus, who came 
to him in the conceit of a young sophomore. He 
did not listen too attentively for fear his com- 
panions would think he was coming under the 
[35] 



Right Living 

influence of this homely man, this unacademic 
stone-cutter; so, gradually, the criticism, the 
the searching sentences, the enunciated truth, 
drove him away. But he saw something in 
what Socrates said that was too good to be 
slighted, and so he came back, listened, and 
finally assumed the attitude — the only attitude 
that becomes the student, the attitude of the open 
mind, the receptive attitude of one who was willing 
to ask questions. So Socrates led him up and on, 
and at last in his humility and frankness he said: 
" I would I might know how to give deference to 
the gods in the manner you speak of," and the 
answer was prompt and as pertinent now as it was 
then, " Would you honor the gods, obey the 
law." Would you attain the graces of society, 
serve the state and be loyal to the community. It 
was in this conversation with Euthydemus that we 
come upon the famous saying, " Know thyself." 
Socrates asked Euthydemus if he had ever visited 
the temple of Delphi, the famous temple dedicated 
to Apollo, and if he had ever noticed on the wall 
the inscription, " Know thyself." The youth con- 
fessed that he had seen it, and this inscription be- 
came the text of the highest sermon which Socrates 
preached to the young men of Athens. It certainly 
is the classic text in Socratic lore, and that which 
this great teacher of religion and the nobler exem- 

[36] 



Messages to Youth 

plar in politics and private life used as a text to his 
young men who would fain know the way of life. 

" Know thyself." First, know it that you may 
learn humility. Know your humble origin, know 
your lowly relations, realize that you are related 
by organism as by descent, to the humblest of ani- 
mals. Over yonder in a great hospital is where 
wise men seek to hunt disease in its lair, and to 
ameliorate the woes of life, and anticipate human 
suffering and the human maladies by watching the 
life and experimenting upon the bodies of dogs, 
guinea pigs and what not, knowing full well that 
the fundamental secrets of life, physical life, as 
hidden in the organs of the body, heart, lungs, 
stomach, are practically the same within your 
breast as within the breast of dogs or guinea pigs. 
And he who binds delicate tissues in the minutest 
of diseased organs, who repairs broken limbs of 
the lower animals, is qualified to operate on the 
higher patients in the family tree. So if you know 
yourself you must know your humble origin. You 
come out of the soil with the rest of them, you are 
akin to the lowest; your brothers and sisters go 
on all fours, are clothed in furs and feathers ; nay, 
without furs and feathers, the worm of the dust is 
of your family. You are akin to the lowest. 

Would you know yourself then, you come not 
only to a humility but to a sympathy. There in 

[37] 



Right Laving 

the market place was little to distinguish the noble 
from the bondmen. Socrates could see through 
the silks, and find there brothers and sisters to 
those who went clad in rags. Those who wore 
jeweled sandals had no superior position to occupy 
over this humble stone-cutter who went barefooted, 
and he who marched in the ranks afoot was su- 
perior to the man who rode the horse caparisoned 
with the equipment of a cavalier. He who would 
know himself must know that he belongs to the 
masses. There are no classes to one who knows 
himself. He who knows himself will find that 
however humble the origin there is that within 
every one of you that climbs, that aspires. An- 
thropos^ " the upward looking," is the word the 
old Greek had for men, and there is in human na- 
ture that upward looking element; and he who 
knows himself finds springing out of this very 
humility, this very sense of shame, a longing and 
a hunger for something better. 

Recently wandering through the halls of the 
Capitol at Washington, after studying once more 
the imposing statues in the Hall of Fame — men 
in plain clothes and men in uniforms, those wear- 
ing crosses and those with swords — I passed into 
the connecting room and there came upon just a 
head. No armor, no trimmings, no strappings, 
no flags, no insignature, or tablature — just a 

[38] 



Messages to Youth 

head, cut out of an untrimmed block of marble. 
And yet, once you look into that face, once you 
are under the spell of that head, all the rest of 
them look cheap and small. You have looked into 
Borglum's face of Lincoln. A face that the young 
artist brooded over for fifteen years, studied it in 
all its phases, and from all the angles and by the 
help of all the pictures available, made himself 
learned in the lore of Lincoln, that from within 
the soul of him, that which responded to the great 
democrat, that which thrilled with his message, he 
might carve out of the marble the most wonderful 
and most satisfactory face yet carved of the great 
president. And you, however humble, untutored 
and unlettered you may be, when you look into 
that face, find within yourself that which responds 
to the great friend of animals, the great pardoner, 
the pitying face of him who used his power always 
for benignant ends, he who freed the slaves. 

Now you look away across the centuries and 
see that cheerful, quiet, composed man, training 
the vision of all around as did Lincoln, the Amer- 
ican Socrates. For nineteen centuries, men and 
women high and low, saints and sinners, have 
looked toward Athens and have been inspired. 
Not by any mystic miracle, not by ceremonial 
contact of blood or of sacrifice, but by that which 
recognizes the kinship between the sages and the 

[39] 



Right Living 

Man of Galilee, who told them how to love, who 
revealed to them what was in their own souls. 

This is why biography of all departments of 
literature I think is the most inspiring, and per- 
haps the most helpful, to young men and women 
who have achieved the things you fain would 
achieve. Read the stories of the brave ones who 
were enabled to face death. Read particularly 
the stories of those who found their inspiration 
and comfort and power, not in anything they had, 
not in anything they acquired, not in the position 
they occupied, but in the intangible things, the 
things of the spirit, in the growth of their minds. 

Be sure my young friends, that the experience 
of all, from Socrates to Augustine, and down to 
Lincoln, is that the world is so ordered that pleas- 
ure supreme waits upon those who walk in the 
paths of virtue. Still pleasure is no test of the 
noble and no safeguard to the human. No, not 
even love is a safeguard for your conduct and mine. 
Duty, justice, equity, truth make the road, though 
it seems hard and rugged, and though it proves 
to so many a steep and difBcult one, the only road 
on which you may travel to Socratic heights and 
to the supreme power of the Man of Nazareth. 

Knowing thyself, you will know that there is 
something better than pleasure, safer than love, 
stronger than the fascinations of life to guide your 

[40] 



Messages to Youth 

feet on to the heights where ultimately there is 
peace, but always power, which is better for you 
and me. Peace is not for mortals while there are 
wrongs unrighted, lives unguided, appetities un- 
controlled, needy ones unbefriended. Pleasure is 
not for you and me while these things remain, 
but service and usefulness lead to power, bring 
a joy behind the pleasures of life, a peace beyond 
the competency of the world. Know thyself I 



LIFE AND GROWTH 

A. S. IsauQs^ New York University 

The law of life is the law of growth. This 
is universal in every sphere and condition, 
whether of the mind, the body, or the spirit. We 
must grow to live; and happy those who live to 
grow, with a passion for growth that uplifts them 
from the valleys to the hills! 

A traveler — so runs the old legend — walking 
through the woods saw a little brook full of foam, 
as if seeking to leave its leafy nest. " What ails 
thee, O brooklet? " " I am tired of being always 
a brooklet and narrowed down to my unsatisfying 
bed. I want to join the stream." A few days 
later he met a stream, and the streamlet usually 
so gentle and passive, was leaping along at rapid 
speed. " Why so restless, my gentle streamlet? '' 

[41] 



Right Living 

he asked. " Do not restrain me,'' it replied. " I 
am weary of being a petty streamlet. I yearn to 
become a river." A few weeks passed, and lo, one 
day the traveler met a river, hurrying along, its 
waters oversweeping its banks in an impetuous 
sweep onward. " River, river," he exclaimed, " so 
quiet, with thy waters a mirror reflecting only 
placid skies, why art thou so disturbed? Why 
art thou lashing thy banks in a fury? " And 
swift came the river's answer : " I must be more 
than a river. No narrow banks must confine me. 
I seek a broader, fuller life, and hasten, ever hasten 
towards the boundless, all entrancing ocean ! " 

Such is the passion for growth that beautifies 
the world withal! From the acorn to the oak! 
" First the blade, then the ear, then the full com 
in the ear ! " Seed, flower, fruit ! Rain-drop and 
pearl. Smiling babe, questioning child, mature 
man! 

In history, we see the application of the law 
of growth. Out of idolatries and superstition^ 
Israel grew to become a people of ideals, which 
has become with its Bible and its commandments 
an heirloom of the nations. Spain in modern times 
refused to grow, as it allowed the Inquisition full 
power to check advance and hamper progress. 
But Holland grows out of the sea and by sheer 
moral strength instead of being a kingdom of 

[42] 



Messages to Youth 

water-rats, is a leader in education, statecraft, 
philosophy, and art. 

In the lives of famous men, however, the same 
law is at work. It was the passion for growth 
that changed the Scottish plough boy into the 
psalmist of the eighteenth century, and gave Helen 
Keller sovereignty even in blindness. And in our 
schools and colleges the differences and diversities 
among students are merely those of energy, not 
power, of resolve, not capacity. With a passion 
for growth as controlling force, texts, paradigms, 
problems, each daily task is illumined, and the 
brooklet becomes the river, and the river joins 
the sea! 

And in the world within, the great world of the 
Spirit, does not the same law apply? I am aware 
that my audience comes from varied homes and 
surroundings. Each student has his or her accus- 
tomed habit of thought and belief; happiest those 
who remain true to the faith of their parents. 
In the final analysis, human creeds with all their 
dissimilarities and dissonance, have more in com- 
mon than we fancy, and their good qualities come 
from a common stock. The real difference among 
the creeds springs from the weakness or the inten- 
sity of the passion for growth. There must be 
progress from the fossil to the rock, from the 
stone to the cathedral, from the whispering trees 

[43] 



Right Living 

to the majestic organ symphony. Music, art, 
architecture, all have developed, and so shall 
religion develop with humanity's passion for power 
and perfection. 

I saw a sparrow on the window rest, 

I caught a simple rose in blossom there. 

O nerveless echo from the muffled past. 

How canst thou with the living voice compare! 

The costly shrines, in stone and splendors clad. 
That stir not, though the stately music roll. 

For me, the pulsing life, the sun, the sky. 
The blessed influence of soul on soul. 

Must bird and rose and sunbeam be withal. 

While gloom and dust and marble fill the shrine ? 

Let those who will all humbly bow within, 
O larger, sweeter Father's house be mine! 



OUR COUNTRY 

Cardinal James Gibbons 

It is the habit of pessimistic prophets to predict 
that our government will soon come to an end, 
that it is already in the throes of dissolution, and 
the disaster Is sure to occur if their favorite can- 
didate is defeated. These prophecies are usually 
more frequent on the eve of a presidential election. 

[44] 



Messages to Youth 

I have been listening to these dire prognostications 
for over half a century. 

But in every instance the American people wake 
up in the morning after election to find that they 
were disquieted by false alarms and that the gov- 
ernment is transacting its business in the same 
quiet orderly manner as before. 

I propose to state briefly as possible the grounds 
of my confidence in the stability and endurance 
of the American Republic. 

By a wise provision of the Constitution of the 
United States political authority is not concen- 
trated in one individual or in one department of 
the administration, but is judiciously distributed 
so that the balance of power may be preserved. 
Our general government consists of the executive, 
the legislative, and the judicial branches. If any- 
thing goes wrong with any one of these depart- 
ments the evil is checked by the other two and 
usurpation of power is prevented. There is an 
habitual jealousy among these branches. They 
are on the alert, zealously watching one another, 
so that no one branch may exceed its legitimate 
bounds. " Eternal vigilance is the price of lib- 
erty.'' 

Then, again, besides the federal administration 
we have state governments,. and county rule; we 
have city and town and village municipalities. If 

[45] 



Right Living 

all of these minor corporations were absorbed by 
the general government, if our governors and state 
legislators and sheriffs and mayors and council- 
men were under control of the president; if he 
could at will decapitate all obnoxious subordinate 
rulers with one blow, all our political liberties 
would be at an end. But, happily, all these lesser 
officials enjoy full autonomy in their spheres and 
are independent of the chief magistrate. 

Our system of government is very complex. It 
may be compared to a colossal engine containing 
innumerable wheels within wheels. Each wheel 
works in its own orbit, like the planetary system. 
If the great federal wheel gets out of order the 
smaller wheels are not much deranged, but keep 
on moving till the big machine is repaired. 

We are all familiar with the memorable Titanic 
disaster, which resulted in the loss of so many 
precious lives, as well as of the peerless vessel 
itself. Had all the compartments of that steam- 
ship been water-tight the loss of life would have 
been avoided. 

Now, our government is often called a ship of 
state. This great ship of state is divided into 
forty-eight minor states. Each of these states 
may be said to be waterproof in the sense that 
the engulfing of one would not involve the sinking 
of the other. California, for example, might be 

[46] 



Messages to Youth 

overwhelmed by the waters of a political revolu- 
tion without disturbing the neighboring states of 
Washington, Nevada, and Arizona. 

If our states were mere provinces or territories, 
without autonomy and sovereignty, like other re- 
publics less favored than ours, we would enjoy less 
stability and less hope of enduring freedom than 
we now possess. 

The safety and permanence, therefore, of our 
republic largely depend on the autonomy of the 
several states without the danger of absorption 
by the general government. Should our govern- 
ors and legislators ever become the subservient 
creatures of the federal government they would 
be mere puppets, subject to the will of the chief 
executive. They would cease to be waterproof 
and would share the fate of the Titanic. 

Two momentous crises occurred in my own day 
which were well calculated to test the vitality and 
strength of the republic. The first was the war 
between the states, when the nation was cut in 
twain, when fratricidal blood was shed over the 
land and a tremendous conflict was carried on for 
four years. This calamity has happily ended, 
and the dismembered states are now more firmly 
united than ever before, because slavery, which 
was the bone of contention, has been removed once 
and forever. 

[47] 



Right lAving 

The second crisis occurred in the presidential 
contest in 1876 between Tilden and Hayes. Mr. 
Tilden was robbed of the fruit of the victory which, 
I believe, he honestly won, and by questionable 
devices Mr. Hayes was declared the successful 
candidate. 

A nation that could survive these terrible strains 
must be possessed of extraordinary vitality and 
resources, and leads us to hope that in any future 
emergency the leaders and statesmen of the repub- 
lic will rise to the occasion and bring order out of 
chaos. 

Another strong ground of confidence I have in 
the stability and permanence of the republic rests 
in the enlightenment, good sense, and patriotism 
of the American people. You and your fathers 
have now for a century and a quarter experi- 
enced and enjoyed the blessings of a free and 
strong government. And if you compare the re- 
sults of our political system with those of other 
civilized nations I do not think that our republic, 
with all its drawbacks and shortcomings, will suf- 
fer in the comparison. You can say : " America, 
with all thy faults, I love thee still." 

Cold, indeed, and torpid, obtuse and apathetic 
IS the soul that is not aroused to warmth and 
enthusiasm in contemplating the history of the 
United States, which has been the home of liberty 

[48] 



Messages to Youth 

and the haven of rest to down-trodden milKons in 
other lands. 

But the survival of the American republic must 
rest on a more stable foundation than the patriot- 
ism of our citizens, the genius of our statesmen, 
and the wisdom of our laws. It must have a 
stronger basis than fleets and dreadnoughts and 
standing armies, " for the race is not to the swift, 
nor the battle to the strong." Our enduring sta- 
bility can be secured only under the abiding pro- 
tection of the Lord of Hosts. 

The history of the Jewish people from the 
days of Abraham to their dispersion among the 
Gentiles gives a forcible illustration of this truth: 
those people are victorious in the end who have 
the God of Battles on their side, and that He is 
with them who have unfailing confidence in His 
protection. 

" Righteousness," says the Book of Proverbs, 
" exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any 
people." If our republic is to be perpetuated, if 
it is to be handed down unimpaired to future gen- 
erations, it must rest on the eternal principles of 
justice, truth and righteousness, and downright 
honesty in dealing with other nations ; it must be 
sustained by the devout recognition of an overrul- 
ing Power who governs all things by His wisdom, 
whose superintending providence watches over the 

[49] 



Right Living 

affairs of nations, as well as of men, without whom 
not even a bird can fall to the ground. 

One of the leaders of the convention that assem- 
bled in Philadelphia to frame the Constitution of 
the United States made the following sage remark 
to his colleagues : " We have spent many days 
and weeks in our deliberations and we have accom- 
plished little or nothing. We have been groping 
in the dark because we have not sought light from 
the Father of Lights to illumine our understanding. 

And, happily for the nation, this humble recog- 
nition of a superintending power has been upheld 
from the dawn of the republic to our own time. 
What a striking contrast we present to our sister 
republic across the Atlantic, which once bore the 
proud title of " eldest daughter of the church." 
The leaders of the French republic are so far car- 
ried away by the tide of unbelief that they studi- 
ously eliminate the name of God from their official 
utterances. How different is the conduct of our 
leaders and statesmen! They have all paid hom- 
age to the moral governor of the world. All the 
presidents of the United States have invariably 
invoked the aid of our heavenly Father in their 
inaugural proclamations. It is also the edifying 
custom of our chief magistrate to invite his fel- 
low citizens to assemble in their respective places of 
worship on the last Thursday of November to 

[50] 



Messages to Youth 

offer thanksgiving to the Giver of all gifts for the 
blessings vouchsafed to the nation. Both houses 
of congress are daily opened with prayer. And 
all important civic and political conventions are 
inaugurated by an appeal to the throne of grace. 
God's supremacy is also recognized by the observ- 
ance of the Christian Sabbath throughout the land. 

It is true, indeed, that we have no official union 
of church and state in this country. But we are 
not to infer from this fact that there is any antag- 
onism between the civic and religious authorities, 
nor does it imply any indifference to religious 
principles. Far from it. Church and state move 
in parallel lines. The state throws over the church 
the mantle of its protection without interfering 
with the God-given rights of conscience, and the 
church on her part renders valuable aid to the 
state in upholding the civil laws by religious and 
moral sanctions. 

No man should be an indifferent spectator of the 
political and economical questions which confront 
him. Indifference and apathy in civic and political 
life are as hurtful to the state as indifference in 
religion is hurtful to the Christian commonwealth. 

A sincere man who, in attacking Christian faith, 
honestly believes that he is right, is less blame- 
worthy than the torpid, lukewarm Christian who 
never takes an interest in the religion of Christ. 

[51] 



Right Living 

In like manner, a citizen who earnestly espouses a 
faulty political principle is less dangerous to the 
state than the supine citizen who never takes an 
interest in the political welfare of his country. 

It is my profound conviction that if ever the 
republic is doomed to decay, if the future his- 
torian shall ever record the decline and fall of 
the American republic, its downfall will be due 
not to a hostile invasion, but to the indifference, 
lethargy, and political apostasy of her own sons. 

And if all citizens are bound to take an interest 
in public aifairs that duty especially devolves on 
those who are endowed with superior intelligence 
and education, and who ought to be the leaders 
and exemplars of the people, guiding them in the 
path of political rectitude. 

A MOTTO FOR LIFE 

Dr. Russell Cecil, Moderator, Presbyterian 
General Assembly 

" In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall 
direct thy paths." — Prov. 3 :6. 

In my young manhood these words were im- 
pressed upon my mind by a little incident as an 
excellent motto for life. I was perplexed as to 
the right course to pursue in a matter which con- 
cerned my future, when I unexpectedly met with 

[52] 



Messages to Youth 

a Christian gentleman, much older than myself, 
to whom I was induced by something in his man- 
ner, without any solicitation on his part, to un- 
burden my heart. I had never seen him before but 
he listened quietly to my story, and then said: " I 
will give you my advice in a text of Scripture 
which years ago I chose for my motto in life, 
' In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall 
direct thy paths.' I am a plain business man 
[and as I afterwards learned he was a very suc- 
cessful one] and I never make any change in my 
business or enter upon a new enterprise without 
acknowledging God in it, and seeking His guid- 
ance and blessing, and I can truthfully say that 
He has never failed to lead me. I would advise 
you to acknowledge God in this matter which is 
troubling you and He will surely direct you in 
it." I took this gentleman's advice and have never 
had reason to doubt but that I was divinely guided 
to the right solution of the things which perplexed 
me, and I believe that I learned then and there a 
lesson, as I had never known it before, which has 
been of incalculable benefit to me in life. 

My dear young friends, let me heartily com- 
mend this motto to you. Take God with your 
life — with your thinking, your acting, your plan- 
ning, in short, into all your hopes and aspirations 
for the future. Take God as your Father, the 

[53] 



Right Living 

Lord Jesus as your Saviour and King, and the 
Holy Spirit as your Comforter and Friend, if 
you would be useful and happy and make the most 
of your talents and opportunities in this world. 
There is no place on land or sea; there is no sea- 
son of the year or hour of the day or night; 
no business in which men have a right to engage; 
there is indeed no situation in life in which we 
may not and should not acknowledge God. One 
of my old professors, whom his friends called " the 
beloved disciple," said that from a child he had 
accustomed himself to pray about everything. If 
he lost a book or a plaything he would ask God 
to help him find It; if he was In danger of being 
late at school as he ran along the way he would 
ask God to help him get there in time; and if his 
lessons proved to be difficult he would ask God 
to assist him In mastering them. It was not sur- 
prising that such a man should be directed in all 
of his ways, and come to great honor and useful- 
ness in the world. 

We all need to be directed. Only the proud 
think otherwise. Some years ago I had a friend 
who for forty years was a professor In one of the 
oldest colleges in the land and a man of many 
accomplishments and much learning, but withal 
a doubter. In his old age he retired from his 
professorship, and being a man of Independent 
[54] 



Messages to Youth 

means, he passed his last days in ease. He was 
not happy, however, and when his health began 
to fail, word came that he desired to see me. I 
found him in a disturbed state of mind, and he 
said : " Doctor, I have learned the vanity of intel- 
lectual pride, and I wish you to pray for me. I 
have been doubting God all my life, but it is all 
folly, and I have no peace." As I knelt in prayer 
beside him I could hear him sobbing like a child. 
This scene was repeated several times from week 
to week before he died, and I think at last he found 
peace, but he would have been a happier and a 
more useful man had he sought the Saviour more 
earnestly in his youth. The mistake of all mis- 
takes is the attempt to go through life without 
God. I wish every one of you would take as your 
motto this text : " In all thy ways acknowledge 
Him, and he shall direct thy paths.'' 



YOUNG FOLKS AND THE STATE 

J. Horace McFarland, President American Civic 
Association 

The American state is a mutual arrangement, 
involving mutual responsibilities and mutual duties. 
Those whom we pay to be presidents, governors, 

[55] 



Right Living 

mayors, and other officials, simply do for us the 
things we would do for them if the conditions were 
reversed, and they are quite truly our servants 
as they do this work. 

Now it would be a curious arrangement in which 
a good housekeeper paid no attention to her serv- 
ants, or in which the master of a farm had nothing 
to say to his workers. Yet the condition has 
grown up among us that government, which is 
the visible embodiment of the state, is considered 
as a thing apart and away from daily life for 
the most part. I have actually heard such curious 
talk in my lifetime as is involved in making the 
statement that it is right to keep religion out 
of politics and to keep politics out of religion. I 
cannot understand any situation in which my relig- 
ion should not have to do with my politics, nor in 
which my politics should not have to do with re- 
ligion, for, according to the way in which I have 
come to worship God. The religion I profess 
requires me to live every day as in His sight, and 
I cannot so live in America save under the existing 
government, which some curious folks seem to 
think ill of because the word " politics " has come 
to have an evil meaning. 

I would ask the young men and young women 
to look up what the word " politics " really means 
in its true sense, and then get to understand that 

[56] 



Messages to Youth 

after all it is merely a description of the activities 
of one who is desirous of seeing his servants do 
their work well, and that they are supplied with 
things with which to do that work well. 

Of course the farmer may allow his men to loaf 
at their work, and even to be drunk and disorderly. 
The housekeeper may encourage, through care- 
lessness, bad work, and even wrong practices, on 
the part of her servants. I am afraid we have 
done things like this in connection with our gov- 
ernment relations. I think that sort of thing 
ought to stop, and that we ought to look after 
those who serve us just as carefully as our fathers 
and mothers have looked after the house and farm. 

But there is more to the American State, as it 
relates to young people, than just this. The 
State surrounds us with the benefits of mutual 
government, and this service is the cheapest thing 
we buy in all our lives. When I say cheapest I 
mean best for the money, and I do not mean 
cheap in the sense of mean or poor. 

I can illustrate by recounting what I heard a 
man say about a visit he had recently paid to the 
city of Constantinople. He wanted to see how the 
city looked at night. As there was no public 
lighting provided, he hired a man to carry a torch 
so that he could see his way about the streets. 
It not being the practice to safeguard the people 

[57] 



Right Living 

of the city by having officers or policemen, he 
also hired a man with a gun to protect him. In- 
asmuch as Constantinople, and indeed Turkey, is 
not governed for her people, but for the ruler, 
there are no paved streets worth the name, and 
the only sewers are those which run in the middle 
of the streets. Consequently my acquaintance, 
when he went forth on his sight-seeing trip 
with his light-bearer and his gun-bearer, had 
to walk through narrow, dirty streets in con- 
stant danger. When he was all through with the 
trip, he found that it had cost him as much for 
that night's inspection of Constantinople as he 
had paid at home for a whole year's oversight by 
the city government; yet at home he had paved 
streets to walk upon that were well lighted, he 
did not need a man with a gun, because the streets 
were patroled by policemen, and could walk com- 
fortably, because there were good sidewalks. The 
diiference was that government in America is for 
the benefit of the governed, while government in 
Turkey is for the benefit of the governor. 

So with this wonderful cheapness of good serv- 
ice in this country, it certainly becomes the duty 
of every one of us to be interested, first, in seeing 
to it that our servants whom we pay to give us 
this service are proper men and women to do it, 
and that they do what they are paid for; and, 

[58] 



Messages to Youth 

second, that we pay them enough for this service 
and that we provide them with the things they 
need to make the service right, 

I have known very great wastes to occur in 
cities because the citizens, in the mistaken idea 
that their taxes were too high, did not provide 
the city officials with enough money to do the 
work properly. A railroad company or the Stand- 
ard Oil Company would not do this way. 

But there is a little more than this. Your young 
folks know that when they have done well in their 
studies a good word from you counts, and that 
they are very glad to be commended. This is 
just as true in public life. The mayor of a city, 
a man of high purpose, who was doing his best 
to give good government, once told me that in the 
first three months of his term he had not had one 
visitor except those who wanted to get something 
from him or to scold him about something. No 
one came in to say that he was doing well or to 
give him any encouragement. I do not think 
I need to urge the young folks that this is the 
wrong view to take. 

Now there is coming to be recognized the fact 
that the rightly-handled community does every- 
thing that it can do to keep all its people healthy, 
happy and busy. Germany has within the past 
twenty-five years so rearranged her relations be- 

[59] 



Right Living 

tween the individual and the city that it has become 
very difficult to be poor in a German city. There 
boys and girls are taught in the schools to do 
things with their hands and brains that will aid 
in making Germany a richer nation. The state 
sees to it, through a very democratic form of local 
self-government, that the sick are looked after, 
that those in old age are given self-respecting sus- 
tenation, and that the people who cannot always 
select for themselves where they will live, are pro- 
vided with good houses, with proper recreation, 
and even, in one city, that when they die the under- 
taker does not swindle their families. That is, 
Germany is in the business of getting efficient gov- 
ernment. 

In America we are coming to know that all 
idleness, all dissipation, all crime, that keep men 
and women from productive work is a loss to all 
the community which all must help to pay. This 
is nothing new, but we have not been carefully 
reading the Bible, so that it has not been very 
fully in our thoughts, that after all every man 
is his brother's keeper, and he cannot get away 
from it now any more than Cain could. He must 
keep his brother, whether he keeps him in a park 
or in jail, whether he keeps him at healthful, happy 
work or in a hospital or in the cemetery. His 
expense does not cease sometimes when the man 

[60] 



Messages to Youth 

who has been killed by civic carelessness dies, for 
his family has to be cared for afterward. 

So my message to young men and women is to 
urge them to do well their part in the state, and 
thus make the American state a better state to 
live in. It is now free in a general way ; it is not 
free in its communities. Its people are more free 
to go wrong than they are to stay right. It has 
been so rich, or it has thought itself so rich, in 
using up the wonderful stores of wood and coal 
and ores that God put into the bosom of the earth 
for us, that it has not had time to think of stop- 
ping waste and of looking after humanity. That 
time is now here, and it is the young men and the 
young women of the United States today who must 
in the next generation do the duty of creating a 
better, freer, stronger state, more like the ideal 
that was started when Christ began to walk about 
Galilee and to show how one man is related to 
another. 



THE INIQUITY OF WAR 

Charles A. Blanchard, President Wheat on College 

Today throughout a large part of the civilized 
world men are giving themselves to thought con- 
cerning the folly and sin of war. It is well that 

[61] 



Bight Living 

we join with them in this meditation, for war has 
been from the beginning and until now one of the 
results of sin, and one of the most fearful curses 
which have afflicted the human race. 

If we did not know what we know we could not 
believe that human beings would spend their ener- 
gies in butchering one another, as throughout so 
many centuries they have done. I do not believe 
that even now one man in a thousand, one woman 
in a thousand, knows what war actually is. We 
read in books of war ; most of us do not see it. If 
we see armies, the rule is that it is in time of peace 
that we see them. The martial music, the uni- 
forms, the thunder of the cavalry and artillery, 
and the tramp of the marching feet of thousands 
of men — all this impresses the imagination pleas- 
antly. How few get beyond it, or think of war 
as the horrible thing it actually is. A soldier told 
me that his first experience in field hospital work 
was at Harpers Ferry when Lee was invading the 
North. He said that the sight of streaming blood, 
of pale, drawn faces, of gaping, ghastly wounds, 
of arms and legs cut off and thrown into a corner 
until there was a wagonful to be carried off and 
thrown into a pit and covered with quicklime and 
earth, and another load sawed off and hurried 
away, was so unspeakably horrible that these 
scenes haunted him, waking and sleeping, for days ; 

[62] 



Messages to Youth 

and yet, he said that in a few short months on the 
battlefield he could sit down on the dead body 
of a fellow soldier, drink from his canteen, eat 
from his haversack, and rise up to kill again. If 
this were all, it would be quite sufficient; but it 
is not all. These men who were thus made meat 
for the cannon and rifle were, everyone of them, 
from homes, and mothers and wives and sisters 
and baby brothers, and little children watched for 
their return, watched for the return of thousands 
who never came back, and for the return of other 
thousands who, crippled and maimed, came back 
to die. No eye but God's has ever seen the tears 
that war has caused. No heart but His has ever 
heard the sobs and cries of wives and little chil- 
dren which have burst forth when news has come 
from the field of battle or from the hospital ward. 

How can people understand war ! It is so inex- 
pressibly horrible that the human race would rise 
en masse and blot from the earth the men who 
should propose it, but that we are so ignorant of 
what a foul and loathsome thing it actually is. 

What is war? War is an attempt to settle, by 
killing men, questions about which nations differ. 
The side which kills the largest number of people, 
or is most easily able to stand the frightful cost, 
becomes the victor in the strife, and the victor may 
be the one which has righteousness on its side or 

[63] 



Right Living 

th^ one which has grossly and shamelessly tram- 
pled on the rights of the sister nation. In former 
days personal differences were settled in the same 
manner. Two men disagreed respecting some mat- 
ter of personal interest, and in place of settling 
the difference by conferences or by reference to 
third parties or by the law, one assaulted the other 
with his fists or with a club or with a knife or with 
a gun, and in this way they decided their dispute. 

It is, I believe, generally agreed at this time that 
the duel was a system fit only for savage and bar- 
barous people. Except in belated regions, where 
it yet lingers, it has been abandoned by the whole 
civilized world ; but the principle which is involved 
in the duel is, so far as I can understand, identical 
with that which is involved in war. The difference 
is that war involves the slaughter of hundreds of 
thousands, where the duel costs the death of one 
or two. 

We have witnessed in our time a most remark- 
able movement. I speak of The Hague conferences 
and the results which have already been attained 
by them. When the Czar of Russia first proposed 
this conference a smile of incredulity or a laugh 
of unbelief seemed to fill the world. The most 
absolute despot in the world, with the largest and 
most formidable army at his command, was call- 
ing for a conference in the interests of peace. It 

[64] 



Messages to Youth 

seemed a grim and terrible joke. I am not settled 
in my own mind at present as to what his thought 
really was, but whatever it was it is certain that 
the result has been a long step in advance in the 
interests of world peace. The road to this end 
is so short that it seems incredible that the nations 
should wander in the wilderness of national bank- 
ruptcy before they take it. All that the nations 
of the world need to do to secure peace is to stop 
preparations for war. Is not this so obvious as 
to seem superfluous when mentioned? Probably 
with the disarmament of the nations there would 
be created an international police, a dozen or 
twenty great warships, with a compact body of 
armed men who would be subject to the call of 
the international court for the suppression, sud- 
den and complete, of an uprising if any nation 
should dare to disturb the harmony of the world. 

Of course, with disarmament, and the creation 
of the international police, there would naturally 
be an international court, to which would be re- 
ferred matters of disagreement between nations, 
just as civil courts now deal with differences be- 
tween individuals. 

All this would not cost money. It would save 
money. It would save thousands of millions of 
dollars, not once or twice, but every year for the 
nations of the world. Why cannot steps in this 

[65] 



Bight Living 

direction be taken at once? Why should there be 
today five millions of men in armed camps, set 
apart from the industrial world, parasites on the 
labor of the world, while at the same time an 
army of men is housed in ships of war, not carry- 
ing from shore to shore food for the hungry, 
clothing for the naked, or comforts for those who 
need, but at best going from port to port for fool- 
ish display; at worst going from port to port to 
hurl men into untimely graves, 

I think it one of the marvels of human history 
that such an assembly as met in the last peace 
conference at The Hague should have been unable 
to agree on this simple proposition, that the na- 
tions of the world should disarm. The pulpit and 
the press of every civilized nation ought to speak 
in thunder tones from day to day and from year 
to year until the curse and ignominy of war is 
blotted from the world. 

I was going to a train one rainy morning in 
the ancient city of Munich. As I paused on the 
curb to allow an ox-team drawing a load of wood 
to pass, I noticed that it. was driven by a woman. 
She was gray-haired and was dressed in the short, 
heavy skirt of the peasants of Bohemia, and had 
a man's hat pushed down over her gray locks, 
from which on every side the rain was dripping. 
As she plodded along through the mud, guiding 

[66] 



Messages to Youth 

her load of wood, I saw a cab with a fine horse, 
evidently just from the stable. Above was seated 
the driver in his raincoat and with his long whip, 
and within sat a young army officer dressed in 
beautiful uniform, drawing the rain-shield up to 
prevent the rain from soiling his uniform. I 
stood like one riveted to the pavement while I 
remembered that that peasant woman, with her 
gray hairs and poor clothing, was driving that 
ox-cart through the street so that that young man 
might be riding in the cab; that she and others 
like her were paying for the uniform he wore and 
the food he ate^ and paying his expenses when 
he traveled on the train. It was an expression of 
the miseries which are driving millions to leave 
Europe for America each year. 

Young men, strong and stalwart, with hearts 
full of patriotic feeling, flee from the lands where 
they were bom because unwilling to endure the 
degradation of military service. No private sol- 
dier dare resent an insult from an officer* How 
could he? His very life is in the hands of the 
officer and others like him. He is made a slave; 
scarcely even a slave, rather a machine. His con- 
science is destroyed. If he is ordered to shoot his 
mother or his father or his brother, he must shoot 
or be shot. He has no right to inquire whether 
the war In which his nation engages is right or 

[67] 



Right Living 

wrong. All he has to do is to obey his officers. 
When they say drill, he must drill ; when they say 
eat, he must eat; when they say sleep, he must 
sleep ; when they say march, he must march ; when 
they say kill, he must kill. It makes no difference 
whether the contention is right or wrong, whether 
the people he is to kill be guilty or not, whether 
the nation he is required to assault is wrong or 
wronged. It makes no difference; he must do 
the work he is ordered to do. 

I was reading recently in one of the stories 
of our own Civil war respecting the execution of a 
deserter. The writer said it was the purpose of 
the commanding officers to make executions for 
desertion as impressive as possible, and so the 
whole army was mustered on three sides of a hol- 
low square. On the fourth side was a grave for 
the man or men who were to be shot by their com- 
rades in arms. The men were driven clear around 
the three sides of the hollow square, that they might 
be seen by all their comrades. Each man, sitting 
on his coffin, finally reached the grave which had 
been prepared for him. He got out of his wagon, 
the coffin was lifted to the ground, and at the 
word of command these young men, full of life 
and hope, were sent in a moment, by the bullets 
of possibly their friends, into eternity. Executions 
for desertion, for sleeping at post, and for other 

[68] 



Messages to Youth 

military offenses were so common in the army 
at one time that there came to be a regular appoint- 
ment for these executions week by week. The 
stories which are told of Lincoln and his unwilling- 
ness to consent to these slaughter-house practices 
are familiar to all; but Lincoln was not a com- 
mon ruler, and his practices have never been the 
practices of the government. 

In this day we may hope that such bloody 
transactions as have been the familiar history, 
the whole history, of war are not to be seen — 
may never return. But war has written its own 
history, and we know it to be the bloody, horrible 
thing that it actually is, and the children and the 
school, and the mothers and the fathers of the 
boys who must fight the battles of the future, if 
battles are to be fought, ought never to cease from 
efforts to reveal the cruel character of this godless 
and wretched system. 

I have dealt with you thus largely on the bru- 
talities of war as revealed in the lives and work 
of the armed men. But this is only one side of 
this miserable subject. I recently heard an ad- 
dress in which a thoughtful man said: " Everyone 
who has heard the history of war knows that an 
army of fighting men involves also an army of 
fallen women." How could it be otherwise? Here 
are millions of young men taken out of homes at 

[69] 



Right Living 

the time when they should be establishing homes 
of their own, or when their homes are recently 
established, and these men are refused marriage. 
Not one of the sanctifying home influences may 
they know until their term of enlistment is expired. 
In times of peace these men are almost necessarily 
condemned to practice vice, and if they practice 
vice, that involves the ruin of others than them-- 
selves. Governments all know this, and all con- 
sent to it, and when they deny that they consent 
to it, as for example the English government re- 
specting its army in India, witnesses have arisen 
by hundreds and proved them liars. Can you 
people imagine how statesmen and generals who 
have wives whom they honor and daughters they 
love and sons of whom they are proud, can con- 
sent to the havoc caused by war? Would they 
be willing that their own sons should thus be 
destroyed, their own daughters become the vic- 
tims of camps ? You say : " No ; they would be 
horrified at the thought." But if so, how can 
they consent to the death of others who must 
die? Why is it worse for the daughter of a cabi- 
net minister to be ruined by camp life than for 
the daughter of a peasant, who toils in the fields 
while the cabinet minister sits in the parliament 
house? The whole war system is based on the 
theory that the poor and inconspicuous may prop- 

[70] 



Messages to Youth 

erly be made the victims of those who are more 
fortunate. Why would it not settle matters of 
difference between England and Germany as well 
if five hundred men, including all generals and 
civil officers, should meet five hundred from the 
other nation and should fight until one side or 
the other was whipped, and then make peace? 
Why would not this be just as rational and as 
just a settlement as to call the poor lads from 
their business and the girls from their homes and 
destroy the one for the vices of men and shoot 
the other to pieces on the field of battle, and after 
a while make peace? The answer is not far to seek. 
The generals do not wish to be killed, do not 
expect to be killed. They know they may be killed, 
but they hope to return from fields of battle. They 
hope that the poor bodies heaped in the trenches 
and covered with quicklime and earth will be the 
bodies of the common soldiers, and from experi- 
ence they know that this is the way the thing works 
out. If they come home they expect, or their 
friends demand, great sums of money, civil offices, 
and all sorts of offices, and the men who have 
decreed the strife are the men who sit in council 
houses. 

I imagine that in most efforts for improving the 
world discouragement has been a greater obstacle 
than indisposition. 

[71] 



Bight Living 

Men are always saying they would fight against 
the liquor business or any other curse if their 
fellows would. One nation says : " We do not 
wish to fight, but the others want to fight and are 
getting ready to fight, and we must be ready to 
meet them," and the other nation says exactly the 
same, and so the awful game goes on. Warship 
after warship is wrung from the scanty means of 
the suffering people ; improved warships are turned 
out ; ammunition of new and different sorts is dis- 
covered; chemists are busy in their laboratories 
laboring to invent explosives or arms in a way 
to be most effective in killing, and this burden 
is continued because each nation says that the 
other nations are plotting its overthrow. 

The world largely calls itself Christian at this 
time. It is a strange and terrible fact that the 
wars of the world have been so largely inaugurated 
and carried forward by nations which wished to 
be called Christian. It was a prophetic note that 
was sounded by the Chinese government recently 
when one of their ministers said : " We have al- 
ways considered it unworthy of a civilized people 
to settle disputes by war, but the war systems 
of the western nations are such that we are com- 
pelled to enter on preparations for national de- 
fense." What a fearful caricature of Christian 
civilization is found in the war attitude of the 

[72] 



Messages to Youth 

so called Christian nations today ! The Prince of 
Peace is the One who is to bring peace to the 
troubled nations of the world as well as to the 
hearts of men ; and yet war and preparations for 
war are on every side, and Sabbath after Sabbath 
in hundreds of thousands of churches people are 
singing and preaching about the Prince of Peace. 
It is a comfort to one who knows the awful 
annals of the past and who reads the stories of 
the Thirty Years' war, or of any war, and hears 
what untold miseries and burdens are heaped by 
it on human hearts and homes, to reflect that there 
is a growing longing for the coming of the kingdom 
of our Lord. He must reign. Why must He 
reign? Because He is the Creator of the world; 
because He has made these bodies which are to 
be torn and mangled, these hearts which are to 
suffer until they break; because He cannot con- 
sent that the fields which He has made for joy 
and comfort of men should become stained and 
fattened by the blood and bodies of those who 
should till them; because men were created in 
His image and for His glory, and because He 
cannot be denied His rights in the perfection of 
His creation. And He will reign, not as a Prince 
of War; before Him will not go trumpets sound- 
ing battle ; after Him will not go men crazed and 
eager for the blood of their fellow men, but a host 

[73] . 



Right Living 

of the armies of peace. His kingdom is not to be 
built on the mangled forms of men, but upon the 
happiness and prosperity of the creatures whom 
He has made. And His kingdom is as sure to 
come as tomorrow's sun to rise. 



WHO Wn.L SUCCEED 

S. J. Jusserand, Author and Diplomat 

There is no place in this world for people who 
are not in earnest. Every class that is content to 
perform its duties imperfectly, and without sin- 
cerity, that fulfills them without eagerness, with- 
out passion, without pleasure, without striving to 
attain the best possible result and do better than 
the preceding generation, will perish. 



DO RIGHT 

Ben B. Lindsey, Judge, Juvenile Courts 
Denver, Colorado 

Do right because it is right. One of the great 
difficulties with boys and men is that they are not 
willing to be hurt for the sake of the right. It 
hurts to do wrong, yes, but in the modem struggle 

[ 74 ] 



Messages to Youth 

between good and evil in which the spirit of com- 
mercialism and greed is taking such a strong hold 
upon the people, it is bound to hurt, sometimes, 
to do right. But the satisfaction that comes from 
doing right is balm sufficient for the wounds we 
are bound to get for sticking steadfastly to the 
right. 



THREE MOTTOES 
George W. Dewey ^ Admiral^ U. S. Navy 

To a courageous heart and an open mind no 
path of success is barred. 

Honor and truth always win out at the goal. 

Give your neighbor a chance, and remember 
kindness pays big dividends. 



THE USE OF TIME 

James Bryce, Historian and Diplomat 

All I can do is to ask you to tell your students 
that they must try to realize what it is hard to 
realize in the early years of life, but is painfully 
realized in later years, that life is very short and 
that not only every week but every day is of 
value and importance. Those who have learned 

[75] 



Right Living 

to use time well before they are twenty years 
of age, so that every day shall represent some 
increase in knowledge and some step, however 
small, onward, in the development of character 
and of the love of knowledge, have formed a habit 
which will be of incomparable value to them 
throughout the rest of their lives. 



RESPONSIBILITY OF CITIZENSHIP 

John D. WorkSy Senator from California 

I would like above all things to impress upon 
the minds of your students in these troublous po- 
litical times something of the responsibility of 
American citizenship. The evidence of the lack 
of morals in dealing with political questions and 
political affairs, as shown by the numerous prose- 
cutions of men of recognized good character for 
selling their votes, is most disquieting. 

The future of this country and its institutions 
depends absolutely upon the honesty, integrity, and 
patriotism of its people. Much is being said these 
days about the form of government that should 
be maintained, but that is of little consequence 
unless the people themselves can be depended upon 
to do what is right and just in politics as well as 
in other things. 

[76] 



Messages to Youth 

The direct primaries that now exist in some 
of the states place the whole responsibility of 
government upon the voters. By these laws each 
and every voter is allowed to go into his booth 
and privately and in secret vote his real senti- 
ments in the nomination of candidates for office as 
well as in their election. If every American citizen 
could be brought to understand and appreciate 
the fact that this is a government of the people, 
and that he is a part of that government and re- 
sponsible for its proper conduct and control, it 
might help immensely to purify politics, raise the 
^standard of citizenship, and make this a real gov- 
ernment of the people themselves. 

I would like to amplify on this subject in the 
interest of the young people of your school, and 
impress upon them the serious responsibility that 
will rest upon them when they arrive at a time 
in life when they are entitled to vote and assist 
in controlling the destiny of the country. 



YOUR BETTER SELF 

John G. HibbeUy President^ Princeton University 

Do not believe merely what the crowd believes. 
Do not do merely what the crowd is doing, but do 
your own thinking and your own work. Let no 

[77] 



Right Living 

man nor set of men take possession of your own 
soul. Meet the world with a spirit of kindliness, 
but do not sacrifice honor and truth for the sake 
of being agreeable. Do not seek popularity, but 
let popularity seek you. Learn to discriminate 
between real and false values. Put the emphasis 
in life where it belongs. Do not be satisfied with 
what can be improved. Do not be fooled by the 
outward show of things, but penetrate beneath 
the surface. Keep your head clear, your heart 
true, and fear no one but God alone. 



A MORNING PRAYER 

Frank W. Gunsaulusy President^ Armour Institute 

Guard me for yet another day, 
For life is new with morning's ray; 
And foes are strange, untrod the way : 
Guard me through this, an unknown day. 

Gird me for yet another day, 
Though guarded I must fight and pray: 
Teach me to draw my sword, or stay: 
O gird while guarding me today. 

Guide me for yet another day; 
Guarded and girded, yet I stray. 
Find paths for me and I obey: 
Guard, gird, and guide me, one more day. 
[78] 



Messages to Youth 

Guard, gird, and guide me every day, 
So when all things of time decay, 
In morn of heaven by grace, I may 
Enter thy perfectness of day. 



AIM AT THE TOP 

John P. D. JoJin^ Ex-President^ Depauw 
University 

My New Year's message to you is this: Do 
not merely aim high ; aim at the top. 

The majority of intelligent and good people 
are satisfied with a high ideal; they should not 
be satisfied with any ideal lower than the highest. 
The majority are content if they succeed in at- 
taining unto the good; they should never be con- 
tent until they attain unto the best. The good is 
an evil to the extent that it prevents one from 
reaching his best. 

Let me urge you to fit yourselves for skilled 
service to humanity; and nowhere can you attain 
this fitness more thoroughly than in the schools. 

Be not content with completing the course in 
your academy ; that will be good, but do not allow 
it to prevent you from reaching that which is 
better, namely, a still broader and more effective 
culture in the college. 

[79] 



Right Living 

Be not content with even this higher achieve- 
ment; reach out in every direction for the very 
highest. 

Let not the satisfaction and self-congratulation 
at having done well prevent you doing still better. 

Let not the good, or even the better, cheat you 
out of the best. The highest ideal ever set before 
men is seen in the matchless character of Jesus 
of Nazareth. 



THE FIGHTER'S VIRTUE — SUBORDINA- 
TION 

Captain John H, Gibbons^ Supermtendenty 
U. S. Naval Academy 

The Articles for the Government of the Navy, 
which are found in the Revised Statutes of the 
United States, begin with this clause: 

" The commanders of all the fleets, squadrons, 
naval stations, and vessels belonging to the navy 
are required to show in themselves a good example 
of virtue, honor, patriotism, and subordination." 

A man's virtues go to make up his moral char- 
acter. A high sense of honor is necessary to suc- 
cess in any calling. Patriotism is a love of country 
made manifest in both war and peace. These three 
qualities are not the monopoly of any profession, 
civil or military. 

[80] 



Messages to Youth 

Subordination, however, is the basis of military 
discipline. Respect for authority is absolutely 
necessary in order to insure military success, and 
the individual must learn to curb his spirit of 
complete independence and his faith in his own 
judgment. He must be loyal to his leaders. It 
has been said that he who has not learned to obey 
is not fit to command. 

In this free democratic country of ours obedi- 
ence has come to be considered by many as irk- 
some. Laws and regulations are looked upon as 
things to be circumvented. The quality of subor- 
dination, of respect for authority, is sometimes 
very hard to inculcate, but any student to whom 
a naval or military career appeals must remember 
that one can be as good an example of subordina- 
tion in the quiet of the class room as on the deck 
of a battleship. 



LAW AND RIGHT IN AMERICAN LIFE 

James M. Taylor^ President^ Vassar College 

One of the great needs in American life today 
Is the recognition of law and the duty of men to 
obey it. We have too many la-ws and there is too 
great readiness on the part of our people to be- 
lieve that if they are upon the statute book they 

[81] 



Right Living 

are of value, but with all our law-making we are 
not developing, it is to be feared, a spirit of rev- 
erence for law itself. The lack of that affects 
our educational standards and our ability to en- 
force them. On an athletic team or in a game of 
any sort we recognize clearly enough the duty to 
play the game, but we need to see as clearly that 
in the game of life we have our part to play 
and that a failure to respect the laws which gov- 
ern right living is a failure to play the game. We 
need to recognize a standard outside of ourselves, 
independent of our whims or caprices, and to 
which we must conform. Hold to duty, wed your 
life to principle, for better or for worse, and be 
of those who dare stand for the right whether the 
crowd favors it or not. More of that spirit we 
need in our politics, and we need it in our social 
life as well. 



OPENMINDEDNESS 

E. A. Alderman, F resident. University of Virginia 

Of all the ways through which genuine culture 
of the human spirit reveals itself, none is so at- 
tractive or essential as openmindedness. Open- 
mindedness may be defined as a certain intellectual 
hospitality which offers good cheer to new forms 
of truth, and, though wise and keen in the use of 

[82] 



Messages to Youth 

the processes which test the validity of truth, is 
nevertheless friendly, and willing, if the tests be 
passed, to put the stranger at ease in the majestic 
and ever-widening circle of the knowledges that 
enrich life and make men better. The cultivated 
man, then, whatever else he may be, is one who 
so loves the truth that he is always on the lookout 
for it, eager to give it the opportunity to prove 
itself, and perchance, having found the pearl of 
great price, is still more eager to cooperate in so 
relating it to life itself as to forward the ends of 
all true progress. 



THE PILLARS OF THE REPUBLIC 

Charles Scantoriy Secretary^ Presbyterian Temper- 
ance Society 

The best thing that ever was said or ever can 
be said of any community or state or nation or 
race, is this : that it produced great, good, strong, 
virtuous, intelligent, God fearing men and women. 
In all of its slimy history, the liquor traffic has 
never produced a single individual of this kind. 

The liquor traffic licensed or unlicensed, with or 
without the consent of the majority or the minor- 
ity, always and everywhere and under all circum- 

[83] 



Right Living 

stances is unscriptural, unethical, unpatriotic, 
illogical, immoral, and indefensible. 

Let the young men and young women of our 
country once comprehend this truth, and let it 
penetrate to the marrow of their bones and sink 
like atoms of iron into their blood, and the days of 
the traffic are numbered. With no foes to punish 
and no friends to reward, unruffled by passion, 
unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease, 
unincumbered by sorrow, and unstained by sin, 
they stand under the broad heavens with sound 
bodies, strong minds, and pure hearts, among the 
most glorious of things seen below. That such 
people, with such intelligence and such conviction, 
will allow the pillars of the Republic to be under- 
mined is inconceivable. 



FOUR PROBLEMS 

,. Hamilton Holt, Editor, " The Independent " 

In reply to your very kind invitation I take 
pleasure in suggesting that there are four great 
problems that will confront the American people 
during the active life of academy pupils today. 

I do not know the order of their importance 
but they are: 

First, the economic problem, which is largely 
the problem of the just distribution of wealth. 

[84] 



Messages to Youth 

Second, the race problem, or the ways and 
means by which helpfulness and hopefulness may 
be substituted for hatefulness in these sections 
of the country where two or more races abide. 

Third, the sex problem — largely the adjust- 
ment of woman to new conditions in state and 
home. 

Fourth, the peace problem, which is nothing but 
the substitution of law for war. 

Any boy or girl who can do anything in a con- 
istructive way to help solve any of these great 
problems during his life will not have lived in 
vain. 



FOUR THINGS 

Henry van Dyke, D. D. 

Four things a man must learn to do 
If he would make his record true; 
To think without confusion, clearly; 
To love his fellow men sincerely; 
To act from honest motives, purely; 
To trust in God and heaven securely. 



SCOUTS 

Ernest Thompson-Seton, Author and Artist 

I wish I could come and see your young people, 
if only for a few minutes, 

[85] 



Right Living 

You ask me for a suggestion that will give them 
something to think of. I will offer one that inter- 
ests me very especially just now — the debt we 
owe the American Indian. When the Revolution- 
ary fight for independence came on, it was between 
men of the same race, equal in brain and brawn. 
If anything, the British were better equipped, but 
the American had this great advantage; he was 
a trained scout, and for that training, which gave 
him the victory, he was indebted to the red man. 

And the Indian is our model scout today, for 
in spite of endless calumnies by those who wished 
to rob him of his land, he has always stood for 
honesty, truth, courage, cleanliness, hospitality, 
and national ownership of national interests. 



CARE OF THE MIND 

Earl Barnes, Author and Lecturer 

Others will write to you of your duty and of 
your moral life. I want to give you some advice 
about your minds. A fellow who works with his 
hands and lets his mind lie still is like one who 
goes to hunt squirrels with a club, and carries 
along a fine gun without thinking to use it. 

[86] 



Messages to Youth 

Everyone knows that he must attend to his 
hands to see that they do their work well, and do 
not waste time and strength; this makes the dif- 
ference between a clumsy and skillful workman. 
But you must also attend to your mind in the 
same way; and this makes the difference between 
a fool and an able man. Your parents have 
worked and saved that you might go to school. 
The school has trained your minds until they are 
promising young plants. Now they are turned 
over to you. 

The mind will not take care of itself. It may 
struggle along as a starved, half-grown, unsightly 
and useless thing, or, cared for, trained, may 
become a fine tree, rich in flowers and shade and 
fruit. 

To secure the best you must: 

1. Think what you do. You can clean out a 
cellar better if you do part of it with your mind ; 
and instead of your mind going to waste mean- 
time it will be drawing compound interest and 
thus steadily increasing your capital. 

2. Feed your mind. Newspapers are like soup, 
good to start a meal on, but producing only a pale 
and sickly growth if used alone. Strong, earnest 
books of travel, history, and science are the beef 
and turkey of the intellectual life. See that your 
mind has them. 

[87] 



Right Living 

3. Beautify your mind. Hang up good pictures 
in it ; provide it with music ; and train it to respond 
to the rhythm and charm of the poet's words. 

4, Keep it clean. Dirty thoughts are like rub- 
bish in the gearing of a fine machine. 

To do all this you must value and attend to 
your minds. See to it that your hands and feet 
are not worn out with daily toil, while your head 
becomes merely a place for hair to grow. 



DO YOUR BEST 

Marion Harlandy Author 

If I were to condense into a few lines what my 
heart would tempt me to say to any group of 
young people, if I were face to face with them 
(as I would be, if I could) I would remind each 
of them, in the words of my dear friend, Mrs. 
Whitney, who went to her reward many months 
ago, 

My soul bethought of this — • 
In just that very place of His, 
Where God hath made and keepeth you, 
He has no other work to do. 

You may think your sphere narrow and low. 
Or, on the other hand, that to perform aright 
the duties allotted to you by Nature and Circum- 

[88] 



Messages to Youth 

stance, requires more strength and talent than 
you have. Rest assured that God makes no mis- 
takes. None other — were he an archangel — can 
do the work and fill the place the All-wise has 
appointed unto you. To fail in your part is to 
thwart His purpose so far as in you lies. 

" Do the duty that lies nearest your hand." 
" Do your best every time ! " 

In those two lines lies the secret of sustained suc- 
cess, let your work be what it may. Nothing that 
falls within the line of Duty is trivial. 

To be satisfied with mediocre work is to confess 
yourself a failure. 

Say these few and trite words to my young 
friends with my love and blessing. 



THE SONS OF WELL-TO-DO PARENTS 

Colonel C. W. Fowler, Superintendent , Kentucky 
Military Institute 

Just before chapel this morning I picked up a 
copy of Munsey's. In idly turning the pages over, 
I noticed the names and pictures of half a dozen 
successful men who had risen from bootblacks, 
blacksmiths, and other trades, and I could not 
help but reflect on the handicap of wealth. 

These poor boys, with everything against them, 
[89] 



Right Living 

had ambition and the determination to make a 
success in life, and they have done it. No doubt 
they could have made a much better success if 
they had had the opportunities for an education 
such as my boys and yours are having, but the 
discouraging part about it is that boys are not 
taking advantage of their opportunities as they 
should. If they could realize that their future 
depends on the kind of work they are doing now, 
and if they would work at their present task of 
books and character forming as these young men 
worked, instead of meeting with wonderful success 
now and then, fifty to seventy per cent of our 
pupils would go out into life making these brilliant 
successes. 

But things come altogether too easy for the 
modern boy whose parents are well-to-do, so that 
he does not exert himself to attain success. This 
complaint is so general that when the son of a rich 
man makes a success the papers and magazines 
take it up as something wonderful. 

While wealth is a great blessing when properly 
used it is a terrible handicap for a young man. 
It is so much easier to exist than it is to live 
that the great majority are content with a medi- 
ocre existence instead of a noble life. 

The man that will discover a way to fire the 
ambition of the sons of well-to-do parents, will be 

[90] 



Messages to Youth 

a greater benefit to the human race than any 
man that has ever lived. 

I trust this little talk will stimulate some of 
my hearers to his best efforts from this time on. 



OUGHT AND DUTY 

William ShaWy General Secretary of United 
Society of Christian Endeavor 

I once heard President Henry Churchill King 
of Oberlin College relate the incident of the awk- 
ward, over-grown boy who had come up to the 
college from the farm to get an education. Three 
months with the books had almost broken his 
spirit and he was ready to quit. He stated his 
case to the president and closed by asking, " What 
is really worth while ? '' 

President King replied, " It is really worth 
while to be what you ought, to count what you 
can, and to enjoy what you may." 

The first is character, the second influence, and 
the third happiness, the three goals of life. 

That word ought in the first statement gripped 
me. I am coming to feel that it is about the big- 
gest word in the English language. Certainly it 
is one of the hardest to get around. 

Most of the failures in life are due to the fact 
that people are under the control of their feelings 

[91] 



Right Living 

instead of their will. In my work I meet many 
young people who consider it a sufficient reason 
for not doing certain things to be able to say, 
" I did n't feel like it." 

Feeling has no right of way where- duty is 
involved. The thing we ought to do we ought to 
do, and no juggling with words and feelings can 
change the situation. 

The thing we ought to do becomes our duty, 
something that we owe, a debt that, as an honest 
man, we ought to pay. 

One of the subtle forces that is undermining 
the character of American youth today is the 
tendency to substitute feeling for duty. 

In this chapel service I commend to your con- 
sideration the meaning of ought, and that rugged 
old word duty, that the character of Spiceland 
graduates shall have in it not only the sweetness 
and winsomeness of culture, but also the granite 
and iron of rugged strength. 

" Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good 
soldier of Jesus Christ." (2 Tim. 2:3.) 



THE CHOICE OF CHARACTER 

Gifford Pinchot, Forester 

The great business of life is to build character, 
for character is worth more than all other things 

[92] 



Messages to Youth 

put together. It is character that makes the world 
go round, that makes this earth, century by cen- 
tury, and year by year, a better place for men 
and women, boys and girls, to live, work, and 
grow up in. 

It is character more than all other things put 
together that makes effective boys and effective 
men. Once I heard a great athletic trainer talking 
to a young man of good physical equipment, but 
weak of will and slipshod in character. Said the 
trainer, " If another man had your body he would 
do something with it." 

This country has many men who, so far as their 
bodies are concerned, are far more powerful than 
other men. The reason for a remarkable physical 
capacity lies far less in the body than it does in 
the character. All that anyone does nearly every 
man could do if he chose. The difference lies in 
the choice. 



SELF EXERTION 

Isaac SJiarplesSy President^ Haverford College 

There is no gospel which those interested in 
education need to preach more persistently than 
the gospel of thorough work. There is no way 

[93] 



Right Living 

by which a young person can be educated unless 
he exerts himself. He may acquire interesting in- 
formation from books and lectures involving no 
serious effort on his own part, and thus become 
a well informed man. But he cannot become an 
educated man. An educated man is a man who 
has a mind which can do efficient work. It needs 
training quite as much as the body in preparation 
for a football game. Recent criticisms have come 
from across the water from the Oxford professors 
as to the comparison of English with American 
scholarship. Among other things they say, " as 
a general rule they [American students] know 
nothing well, but something about a great many 
things — a kind of knowledge you might get by 
attending public lectures," West Point Academy, 
which gathers in its boys from all over the Union, 
and frequently the best from the different con- 
gressional districts, tells the same story of gross 
inaccuracy in the knowledge of fundamental sub- 
jects. A majority are refused admission because 
they cannot spell and cipher and are ignorant of 
elementary knowledge, which they have presuma- 
bly mastered in the schools. The great fault in 
education is this desire for an easy, interesting 
course, which does not involve the most strenuous 
exertions on the part of the student. The best 
thing that a boy or girl can do is to get down 

[94] 



Messages to Youth 

under a difficulty and dig his way through. A 
serious problem of mathematics or an abstruse 
piece of translation worked out by one's self is 
worth more than a dozen of interesting lectures 
absorbed without effort. 

Moreover, the results of such work are in the 
highest degree practical, and the training which 
such a course involves is of more use, even from 
the point of view of money making, than the pos- 
session of facts without it, A great many Amer- 
icans will be satisfied with the latter, but he who 
would do the best for his own future will see that 
he acquires mastery of his powers, in the only 
way that it can be acquired, by severe self exer- 
tions. 



A PERSONAL MEMORY OF LINCOLN 

William C. Stoever, President, Luther League of 
America 

One of the greatest privileges granted to me as 
a boy was to see President Lincoln in the proces- 
sion wending its way from Gettysburg to the plot 
of ground to be set apart as a National Cemetery 
for soldiers on November 19, 1863, and later to 
hear that inimitable speech, in which he spoke of 

[95] 



Right Living 

the " government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people." From that day to this anything 
written or said about him has interested me, and 
I have read with pleasure, as well as profit, many 
of the books written about him. His character 
is worthy of emulation by all the boys and young 
men of our land, and if we grew up with his spirit, 
we would have a nation of worthy men. A poor 
boy, encircled by difficulties, opposed by obstacles, 
and obliged to labor by day, he spent his evenings 
in reading and studying, storing his mind with 
those truths which were helpful to him in his 
office as President of this great nation. Books 
were few, his library was small, his two principal 
books being the Bible, which he read carefully and 
intelligently, and which was his guide in all his 
affairs, and Shakespeare, from which he learned 
men, and eventually became a master of men. 

With a kind and loving heart, the joy of his 
own mother and his stepmother, both of whom 
said that he had never spoken to them a cross or 
unkind word, and never failed to help them; one 
interested in humanity, as is attested by his pardon 
of soldiers when condemned to death, thus saving 
boys for their mothers; and by his emancipation 
of those who had been under slavery for so many 
years, he was true to his principle, but he never 
antagonized men by an offensive manner or by the 

[96] 



Messages to Youth 

use of strong language. He overcame the enmity 
of his opponents, and showed his strong-minded- 
ness by elevating to the Chief Justiceship of the 
Supreme Court of the United States the man who 
was his only strong opponent for the Presidential 
nomination. 

As the days pass, and we learn more of him, 
we admire him and his character, and his spirit 
and life are worthy of our imitation. 

I hope that all the boys and young men com- 
mitted to your charge will become strong men, 
faithful in every duty, steadfast in principle, inter- 
ested in the study of the Bible as their guide, and 
following Jesus Christ as their leader. 



THE DAY OF OPPORTUNITY 

David G. Downey^ Booh Editor^ M. E. Book 
Concern 

The tendency of the youth of today is to make 
light of opportunity. The sons and daughters of 
this age are inclined to think that their fathers 
and mothers, or their grandfathers and grand- 
mothers, had a much finer chance to get on in the 
world than they themselves have. 

It is always easy and comfortable to put the 
[97] 



Right Living 

Golden Age in the past. This accounts for our 
own failures. The simple truth, however, is that 
this is pre-eminently the age of opportunity. 
There never was a finer chance for high and noble 
service than in the opening hours of the morning 
of the twentieth century. The Golden Age is 
always at our door. 

It is more true today than in Elizabeth's day 
that " to be alive is glorious and to be young is 
very heaven." True, the material earth has been 
discovered and plotted, the physical seas have 
been sailed and sounded ; nevertheless, all the finest 
experiences of humanity, all the ethical and spir- 
itual possibilities are still continents to be explored 
and developed, oceans to be mapped and fath- 
omed. The quest of the Holy Grail is still possible 
and still necessary. This is the truth enshrined 
by Edward Rowland Sill in his exquisite poem : 

This I beheld^ or dreamed it in a dream: 
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain. 
And underneath the cloudy or in it^ raged 
A furious battle^ and men yelled^ and swords 
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner 
Wavered^ then staggered backward^ hemmed by foes. 
A craven hung along the battle's edge, 
And thought, ** Had I a sword of keener steel — 
That blue blade that the king's son bears — but this 
Blunt thing — " he snapt and flung it from his hand. 
And lowering crept away and left the field. 

[98] 



Messages to Youth 

Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead. 
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword. 
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand. 
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout 
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down. 
And saved a great cause that heroic day. 

We are all sons and daughters of the King. 
Let us then not complain of our weaponry, our 
equipment, our circumstances; but with courage, 
faith, and high cheer let us go to our tasks and 
win notable victories for our King and His 
Kingdom. 



THE IDEAL WORLD 

David W. Dennis, Professor, Earlham College 

My young friends, I am asked to say what I 
would most like to say: 

Trust no future how 'er pleasant. 
Let the dead past bury its dead; 
Act, act in the living present. 
Heart within and God overhead. 

Acting, diligence in business, at your time of 
life and in your situations, means preparing your- 
selves by the mastery and marshaling of informa- 

[ 99 ] 



Right Living 

tion, by the acquisition of skill and the use of it 
while you are acquiring it, by reflection, observa- 
tion, and experience, by every available training 
of mind, heart and body to meet every duty that 
comes in your path. 

Your duties must be met by a fuller knowledge 
and surer skill than the same duties ever have 
been by your forefathers. They came West from 
North Carolina, New England, and elsewhere to 
a forest-crowned, rain-soaked Indiana — like the 
brave men they were — and cleared away the for- 
ests and ditched their acres. The West is all pre- 
empted. What can we do? Go down instead of 
out. The Literary Digest has given us a picture 
of a boy standing by 228 bushels of corn 
which he has raised on one acre of ground. This 
multiplies our average yield by ten. What 
return should we make to the man who would 
lead us into another United States? But this 
boy is the dynamic pioneer who has led us 
into, we may in moderation say, a half dozen 
possible United States. Let us suppose you are 
to be a physician. The towns are full of doctors ; 
you must go farther into the profession than did 
the doctor of the old school. There will then be 
room for you beside him; room for you and him. 
The stomach, its ailments, and their relief are all 
one man can master. Confine yourself to these; 

[100] 



Messages to Youth 

the busiest doctor I ever knew did just this. Do 
it and you can serve your fellows and make a living 
in any town in which you may be. It is the wild 
woolly West of ignorance you must invade; clear 
or subsoil or underdrain or irrigate its mental 
lands, hitherto unclaimed and unreclaimed. 

There is a journey ahead of you whatever you 
are to do. Sixty years ago a college graduate 
was equipped for any position as a teacher in In- 
diana. Today university training is necessary 
for the best High School positions. Your journey 
must be into your profession or trade. " This 
one thing I do '' is the essential motto for today 
and it will be for tomorrow. 

We never tire of telling the story of a black- 
smith like Robert CoUyer, who in twenty-one years 
at the anvil so educated himself that he became a 
famous preacher and a platform orator for the 
rest of his life. It could hardly be done now ; one 
would lose his place at the forge if he attended to 
it so little. We must love our tasks, live in them 
and for them, as well as by them, until we have 
brought renown to them. The novel of the future 
should leave its blacksmith-hero a worker in iron ; 
make him — say a mechanical (auto) engineer. 

" Back to the farm " must become more than a 
slogan if we are to prosper as a nation. Our story 
now begins : " He was bom in Ohio ; he warmed 

[101] 



Bight Living 

his feet on a frosty morning on the grass where 
a cow had lain over night ; became a school teacher 
at seventeen; a soldier at eighteen; climbed to 
shoulder straps at Antietam, Opequan, Cedar 
Creek, and Fisher's Hill; became a congressman 
at thirty-three; governor at forty-eight, and 
President at fifty-four. ' He burst his birth's in- 
sidious bar.' " 

When we have lived on the farm to such pur- 
pose as the boy above referred to, when we have 
done it on millions of farms ; when by study of its 
multiform activities, we have perfected our herd 
of Herefords, of Durocs, of Orpingtons, of Per- 
cherons, when we have mastered the adaptations 
of soils and crops; when our dairies, our soils, 
our plants, our animals all know their enemies and 
friends among the bacteria, and each has har- 
nessed the one and conquered the other with the 
same certainty that civilization has now the Shrop- 
shire and tiger ; when the farmer boy has, by the 
mastery of all these processes become the peer in 
culture and manhood of the very best, then we 
shall be ready for the novel that begins with the 
farmer's boy and ends with the Captain of the 
Langshangs. 

Meanwhile we shall have discovered that there 
are two worlds at least; one is the spectacular, 
the strenuous, the outflung, the competitive, the 

[102] 



Messages to Youth 

conquering — in short, the limelight of the world. 
We hardly need to be encouraged to enter this. 
The other is the quiet, the helpful, the perceiving 
(adjectives will hardly describe it). It finds a 
new place or makes one instead of pushing a 
neighbor out of his; it is creative, it improves 
while it uses, is room-making and therefore roomy. 
The first harvests only. It grows rich while it 
impoverishes, sees no burning bush for it is too 
busy " plucking blackberries." The second plants 
that it may harvest tomorrow; enriches while it 
uses, helps others climb by inventing new ways 
to get up, pauses before the golden glow of the 
dawn and gives thanks that 

God lives and lifts his glorious morning up. 

All that is desirable of the first world may enter 
the second ; its noise, its vanity, its startling quali- 
ties, its first-page features hardly can. 

Let us thank God for this " new world." Prop- 
erly equipped in head, heart and body you may 
enter it. Your knowing friends will rejoice for 
they will see that you shall become rich. Your 
neighbors, your state, your country, mankind will 
rejoice because in it you will win the more; really, 
because others will share in the victory. 

In this new world we shall not become famous — 
[ 103 ] 



Right Living 

get a hero's medal because we do our duty — for 
in it all shall do this " from the least to the great- 
est." Would it not be good to lose our heroes 
because all are heroic? 

In our new world we shall not only upon occa- 
sion rise at three in the morning " to learn by a 
comet's rush," but at all convenient hours of the 
day we shall be alike eager to learn " by a rose's 
birth." 

Ah, if we could but see Niagara. It is almost 
the largest comprehensible unit of the almightiness 
of God. Its roar terrifies us, its rush astounds us, 
its busy whirl stirs our dull senses, arrests our 
lethargic attention, or, it may be, draws it away 
from ourselves. 

I do not understand Niagara; I go to see it 
whenever I can. Not dull, but dead, indeed, we 
should be if it did not arouse us ; but Niagara is 
dangerous, destructive. I always return from it 
with a relief and gladness, to a cornfield, living the 
aspiring life of the soul and sky, drinking in the 
joy of the clouds and the sunshine, singing its 
enchanting rustle while it gathers in the energy 
that shall feed the world. 

Build your house by the cornfield, but go some- 
time to see Niagara. The restful thing there is 
that the citizens of the quiet world have studied 
out a way to make Niagara's awful energy render 

[ 104] 



Messages to Youth 

midnight illumination 100 yards ahead of a boy on 
his wheel, or shine like the sun itself for him at 
the fireside half the circle of the earth away. 

An illustrious example of the first world was 
Napoleon; of the second, Pasteur, A straw vote 
of France has lately named Pasteur as the great- 
est Frenchman of all time. Why not? He has 
already saved as many lives as Napoleon destroyed, 
and the list grows and will grow while time lasts. 
He has filled the treasury of France with more 
money than Napoleon ever took away from it. 

It is a glorious new world war along the Rhine. 
Pasteur is commanding on this side that the rabies 
shall kill no longer ; Koch on the other that cholera 
shall never again stalk from one new made grave 
to another, across Europe, across the Atlantic, 
across the United States, its awful harvest only 
stayed by the nine thousand miles of homeless ex- 
panse, the Pacific. 

It is a new day to which I cite you ; a brother- 
hood, a democracy. Do not despair of it. The 
golden rule is attainable, is practicable. God has 
given us a working model in the organization of 
our bodies. .Eye, brain, hand, foot, lung, heart, 
stomach, muscle, bone, etc., are equally faithful 
and receive equal pay. Every organ is made up of 
many millions of units called cells. There are more 
of them working together for the good of the world 
[105] 



Right Living 

than all the people in the world. Everyone of them 
is faithful, just, impartial. There is no first or 
last, no better or worse, no high or low, no great 
or small, in all this vast organism. Some com- 
mand, as the brain cells, some obey, as the muscle 
cells, some protect and support, as the bone cells, 
some bind together in one bundle. Some are more 
important than others for if they refuse to act or 
act improperly death results. Other millions of 
cells can die and man live on, but the circling 
around brings the life blood to all and they eat 
and live. The pay is the same whatever sort of 
service; it is justly proportioned to the amount 
of service. There are unemployed cells in the body 
— the white blood corpuscles ; they can teach us, 
if we will listen, what is our chief fault as a na- 
tion. These swim in the blood current, eat at the 
first table; this, that they may ever be ready to 
serve at a moment's warning. At need, they knit 
again our broken bones, bind up our wounds, be- 
come an army and repel invading bacteria. 

Our children are the nation's unemployed. 
Some time the state will take care of all the un- 
cared for, as wise parents do now, that there may 
be no recruits for the thinned ranks of anarchy 
and indigency; that all the posts of service may 
be filled with happy, intelligent, skillful, industri- 
ous citizens. 

[ 106] 



Messages to Youth 

Wasteful as our farming has been, ruinous as 
our slaughter has been, our neglect of them so that 
they have been unharvested when ripe, and wasted 
by torch and tempest; prodigal as we have been 
of our waterpower, cities, and our mines of coal 
and ores; thanklessly as we have squandered our 
stores of natural gas, all this is negligible com- 
pared with the mental, moral and physical waste 
of our children. The state of which we are a part 
should be as kind to its orphans and the children 
of its poor as your parents are to you. What 
efficiency we might then expect from the next gen- 
eration. 

The conservation of our children is our. one big 
duty. They are the indifferent units of our body 
— social, political, industrial, religious ; the white 
blood corpuscles, and must be cared for. We 
can't .'^ The money wasted in battle ships will do 
it; or, if we need battle ships, we have other 
moneys. 

The Psalmist long ago prayed for his country, 
" that our sons may be as plants grown up in 
their youth ; that our daughters may be as corner 
stones, polished after the similitude of a palace : 
that our garners may be full affording all man- 
ner of store '' — a prayer for conservation in the 
right order, the sons and daughters first, then the 
riches for all. 

[ 107 ] 



Right Living 

Utopian ? Not at all ; not for you, for you are 
young; and we shall always have the young with 
us. 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS MONEY 

Charles R. Brown, Dean, Yale Divinity School 

Money is stored up in life. If you work hard 
for a day and receive five dollars for it, that gold 
piece is so much of your own life expressed in 
terms which all the world understands. You have 
put it into energy, intelligence, fidelity, if you 
really earned the gold piece — it is that much of 
your life ! And you can make it minister to your 
life in a legitimate reaction. The gold piece will 
put food in your mouth to repair waste, it will 
put a hat on your head, or offer books to your 
mind, or travel to your wish for a broader out- 
look and experience. You cast your effort on the 
waters and the gold piece brings it back to you 
in some other form which you prize. 

You can, if you will, make your gold piece 
minister to other lives — education for the child, 
medical attendance for the sick, comfort for the 
needy — it will mean life for each one. You can 
also relate yourself to the activities of men 

[ 108 ] 



Messages to Youth 

through your gold piece. If you spend it in a 
saloon, you start other men to making beer and 
whisky and keeping grog shops. If you spend it 
in a gambling den, or brothel, you swell the de- 
mand for those forms of vice to the extent of 
your gold piece. If you spend it for groceries or 
clothing or books, you start men to producing 
those wholesome articles. You have power over 
the world of activity to the extent of your gold 
piece. 

You see then how vital is the relation between 
money and manhood. There are four relationships 
which a young man sustains to money. First of 
all he relates himself to it by the money he earns — 
earn it honestly. I take it for granted that every 
young fellow who had strength enough of mind 
to come here is either earning his own money or 
intends to earn it. Earn your own money then if 
you would make it a ministry to manhood. Never 
think of sitting around waiting to inherit it — it 
is the mark of a decadent. Never think of setting 
out to marry it. It may be well enough to marry 
a woman with a fortune thrown in if your own 
honest affection happens to steer you that way, 
but it is disgraceful to marry a fortune with a 
woman thrown in. A man who sells himself is as 
much lower than the girl on the street who sells 
herself as he is stronger than she. And the man 

[109] 



Right Living 

who does not know the joy of taking the girl of his 
choice to the home which his own energies have pro- 
vided, even though it is no more than a three-room 
cottage, and then of caring for her until he can 
give her all manner of advantages, misses half the 
joy of life. Earn your own happiness, if you 
would find it satisfying. 

Earn your own money, I say, by honest effort 
— beware of the short cuts. These " get-rich- 
^uick '' schemes rob about ninety-nine people out 
of a hundred of their money — some promoter 
gets it. And the one man out of the hundred who 
makes money commonly loses his own soul in the 
process of getting something for nothing. 

Earn it — do n't gamble for it, either at the 
race track or poker table, the bucket shop or 
through buying stocks on margin! You ought 
to be able to feel that every dollar has come to 
you by the investment of energy, intelligence, fidel- 
ity. You must feel that you have given some val- 
uable equivalent, which cannot be said of any 
dollar won through gambling. Shun the whole 
dirty business of gambling as you would shun 
leprosy. You cannot afford to carry a piece of 
money in your pocket which is not clean. 

Earn it — do not steal it! It ought not to be 
necessary to say that nearly forty centuries after 
God said from the top of Mount Sinai " Thou shalt 

[110] 



Messages to Youth 

not steal/' It is necessary! My experience of 
twenty years in the ministry dealing with boys 
and young men, having them confide in me and 
appeal to me to help them out of terrible situa- 
tions, has led me to know that there are young 
fellows present who are stealing. The only salva- 
tion is for him to walk so that he can look God 
and man in the face. 

Let me appeal to you as one who has heard the 
voices of boys and young men tremble and break 
in their confessions, who has seen their faces ashy 
white over what they feared was in store for them, 
who has watched them with their minds intent on 
state's prison, wondering if they would soon be 
there — - let me appeal to you, " Never lose out 
of your heart the horror of taking what is not 
yours." Earn your money honestly — there is 
no joy in any other sort of wealth. 

In the second place a young man relates himself 
to money by what he spends — spend it consci- 
entiously ! Of all the fool ambitions which some- 
times have their hour with young men that of 
being known as " a good spender " is the emptiest. 
The young fellow who lets his money slip through 
his fingers easily, recklessly; the man who robs 
his employer, perhaps, in order to have plenty of 
automobile rides and road-house suppers, and then 
rides to prison to think it over for a term of years, 

[111] 



Right Living 

is very commonly known about town as " a good 
spender.'^ 

Men laugh at them, and even the girls have 
their own ideas on the subject. They know that 
the young fellow who sends them American Beau- 
ties when he can scarcely afford dandelions is 
simply indicating that he has more money than 
brains. When these very girls come to select 
husbands they prefer men who have more sense. 
There are lots of girls in this world who are not 
half as silly as certain foolish men think they are 
— they quietly laugh in their sleeves at the " good 
spenders," even when the money is being spent on 
them. Extravagant spending has become a fruit- 
ful source of temptation which in turn has led to 
terrible dishonesty. 

Money is power to quicken activities wholesome 
and helpful or vicious and hurtful. Therefore, 
put wisdom and conscience into the investment of 
every dollar you spend. 

In the third place the young man relates him- 
self to money by what he saves — save prudently ! 
You will see young fellows hopping around in so- 
ciety, chirping to the girls like so many canaries. 
If any one of them went to open an account in a 
savings bank he would have to be told three times 
where to sign his name. He is missing the larger 
things in growth, travel, in enrichment for himself 

[112] 



Messages to Youth 

and for those other lives which are bound up in his 
own, for the sake of the mere gratification which 
may be in no sense wicked but is unworthy of such 
a sacrifice. 

I make it a point to urge every young man to 
save his money by taking out life insurance early. 
The financial effects of it are good and the moral 
effects better still. He begins to feel that he has 
a stake in life. He has been providing for his own 
interests and for those of the family he has or may 
have ; and there is a satisfaction in that which goes 
away ahead of the purchase of American Beauty 
roses, automobile rides, theater parties, or wine 
suppers. 

And finally a young man relates himself to 
money by what he gives — give generously and 
systematically. You may earn honestly, spend 
wisely and save prudently, and still allow money 
to be your master instead of making it the servant 
of moral purpose, the messenger of good will. You 
must couple, therefore, with the other three habits 
formed early and steadfastly that of generous and 
systematic giving. 

In setting out to earn your own money honestly, 
to spend it wisely, save some of it prudently, and 
to give a certain portion of it generously, expect 
and accept a certain amount of struggle, hardship, 
sacrifice. What, indeed, are your health and 
[113] 



Right Living 

ambition for but to face and conquer all this ! 
When any young man's interest is in avoiding pain 
and seeking ease; when he is always insisting on 
comfort and grasping for luxury, he does not de- 
sei*ve to be young. He is not young — he is al- 
ready old and defeated. Accept the struggle and 
the sacrifice! Rejoice in it all, for that is what 
transforms pulp into reliable fiber, boys into men. 

— From The Yowng Man^s Affairs, 

By Courtesy of Thomas Y. Crowell Company. 



SELF-SATISFACTION AND PITY 

T. N. Carver^ Professor, Harvard University 

One of the greatest railroad presidents which 
this country has ever produced used to make it a 
rule never to promote any man who was satisfied 
with what he had done. The reasoning on which 
he based this rule was very simple. If you are 
satisfied today with that which you did yesterday, 
it means either that you have no very high ideals 
as to how work ought to be done, in which case 
you are not likely to improve, or it means that you 
cannot see today how yesterday's work might have 

[114] 



Messages to Youth 

been done better, in which case you have stopped 
growing mentally. If you cannot see today how 
yesterday's work could have been improved upon, 
you are no wiser today than you were yesterday. 
The man who is not growing mentally and morally 
is already too old, however young in years he may 
be, to be promoted to a position of greater trust 
and responsibility. 

Beware of being satisfied with yourself. 

Infinitely worse than self-satisfaction is self- 
pity. The question is sometimes discussed whether 
Shakespeare teaches morality or not. That is 
very much like the question whether the air exerts 
any pressure or not. There may be few ethical 
formulae, few statements of moral principles 
which could be framed and hung on the wall or 
thrust on the attention of our neighbors in an 
opinionated way; but the greatest fundamentals 
of rational morality are so all-pervasive as to al- 
most escape our notice. A careful study of the 
characters of Shakespeare will show one principle 
which is, after all, the greatest of all moral prin- 
ciples. Every character which we are made to ad- 
mire was a character which neither good fortune 
' nor ill fortune could spoil. When good fortune 
came, they all remained simple, modest, generous, 
brave, and loyal. When ill fortune came, they 
did not pity themselves, did not become rancorous 

[115] 



Right Living 

and bitter. The men stood up like men and re- 
ceived the blows of ill fortune, and did not 
" squeal.'* The women bore their misfortunes 
with meekness and fortitude, and did not lay the 
blame on others. On the other hand, every char- 
acter which we are made to despise was apoiled 
by good or ill fortune. If fortunate, they became 
vain, boastful, and ostentatious. If unfortunate, 
they " squealed," they laid the blame on the world 
in general. Everyone of his despicable characters 
was made despicable either by vainglory or self- 
pity. 

These two attitudes of mind are very closely 
akin. They both grow out of the quality of ego- 
tism. If you think more highly of yourself than 
you ought to think, you will assume an air of 
supernal virtue when success comes to you, and 
you will strut about like a turkey gobbler, making 
an ostentatious display of wealth, or other evi- 
dences of success. If failure comes to you, it will 
not shatter your self-conceit, it will merely make 
you bitter against the world for having cheated 
you out of your deserts. You will pity yourself 
and blame the rest of the world. Then you are 
ready for any kind of crime or villainy. 

Beware of self-pity. There is no crime to which it 
will not drive you, if only it becomes deep enough. 
Pity yourself enough, and you will commit any 

[116] 



Messages to Youth 

crime in the calendar. Pity yourself only a little, 
and you will only become mean and ugly in your 
disposition. 



WORDSWORTH'S DAFFODILS 

William H. Mawwell^ Superintendent^ New York 
City Schools 

The poet Wordsworth wrote the following lines : 

I wandered lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills^ 

When all at once I saw a crowd, 
A host of golden daffodils. 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees. 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

I gazed, and gazed, but little thought 

What wealth the show to me had brought. 
For oft, when on my couch I lie 

In vacant or in pensive mood. 
They flash upon that inward eye 

Which is the bliss of solitude; 
And then my heart with pleasure fills. 

And dances with the daffodils. 

Under the symbolism of the daffodils, the poet 
expresses the everlasting truth that the happy, 

[117] 



Bight Living 

the fortunate life is not the life of luxury or riches 
or power, but the life that has garnered the largest 
harvest of joyous memories. Every child should 
know that he or she has the chance to lay up this 
wondrous treasure. The days in school — friends, 
teachers, children — the little acts of love and 
helpfulness which you do and which you receive — 
may you be able to see them all as the poet, with 
" that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude/' 
ever after saw the daffodils ! 

I can wish you no happier fate than that you 
may be enabled to so live that every day will add 
something to the wealth of pleasant memories. 
For that wealth stored in your hearts is wealth 
which moth and rust do not corrupt, neither thieves 
break through and steal. 

May every day of your lives yield for the future 
a vision of daffodils ! 



SOME DUTIES OF A CITIZEN 

Mabel Boardman, American Red Cross Society 

In the busy life that fills the world today our 
work should be of a positive nature. Do not be 
content with being simply good, be good for some- 
thing. 

[118] 



Messages to Youth 

We might shut ourselves up In a monastery or 
a convent and spend all our days in being good, 
but at the end though the world would be none 
the worse for our having lived in it, it would be 
none the better. Would this content you and me? 
Are we willing to let the one life that we live in this 
world be as poor a thing as this? Are we willing 
to leave behind us nothing done for others' good? 
It is in our relationship to others that our best 
citizenship will be shown, for a citizen is a member 
of a community of persons. 

It is not the great men of a nation that help it 
most, it is the character of all of its men and 
women that will lift a nation to a higher plane. 
It is not some famous victory or some great inven- 
tion that makes the life of a people nobler and 
better. It is the daily lives you and I live, it is 
the way we do our work, the way we enjoy our 
pleasures, it is above all the way we take our re- 
sponsibilities and accept our duties that will make 
us a better and a nobler people. 

The true growth of any nation is by evolution, 
not revolution. Did the overthrow of republics or 
monarchies make the people of a country better 
people? Or has it been the slow sure growth in 
the character of thousands of individuals during 
many centuries that has gradually lifted us out of 
barbarism into the Christian civilization of today? 

[119] 



Bight Living 

It IS in this growth that you and I should take 
our part as an mdividual citizen, making the world 
better by our being in it. Make the home life 
better by filling it with interest in the important 
questions of the day, crowding out the petty gos- 
sip, the narrow selfishness, and so by your thoughts 
and discussions help to solve wisely the many prob- 
lems of our people. For these problems will be 
solved by the people, and unfortunate the people 
who do not solve them by wise and thoughtful de- 
liberation. 

Make the business world better because you are 
in it. Deal with all men honestly and truly. Be- 
lieve — and this is not easy — that you would 
rather have a man deal unfairly with you than that 
you should deal unfairly with him. Set for your 
business life as high a standard in uprightness as 
you do for your individual life and the business 
world will be your debtor for this principle. 

Enter with your heart and mind into the civic 
life of your community and make this better be- 
cause you are a part of it. Believe that anyone 
who once sells or barters his vote should lose for- 
ever his right of citizenship, that such an act has 
lowered the standard of the whole community, and 
cast a blot upon the fair escutcheon of your coun- 
try. Realize, each one of you, your responsibilty 
to the community in which you live. Your public 

[120] 



Messages to Youth 

officials will be what you require them to be. The 
people of this country do rule, and only their own 
neglect of their civic duties takes this right from 
them. Do not put the fault that is ours upon the 
constitution, that is broad and strong enough for 
any men to do right under, but remember it is the 
spirit of honesty and truth that really counts in 
public life. 

If you take public office take it as a solemn serv- 
ice and not for self-glory or self-exploitation. Re- 
member many temptations will surround you. The 
standard, which at first you held so high will be 
in constant danger of a fall, so hold it firmly with 
courage in the right and the true heart of an 
honest man. 

Remember there are two sides to every question 
and temper always your enthusiasm with justice. 
When abuses exist study calmly, carefully, and 
wisely the best methods for their remedy. Beware 
of false prophets who like quack doctors promise 
a remedy for all ills. Guard yourselves lest in 
seeking what you think your rights you do not 
bring about another's wrong. Remember that the 
making of ten more commandments would not make 
us better men and women nor raise the moral 
standard of our country. Upon you and me and 
all the other people of this country as individual 
citizens must depend its moral standard in private, 

[121] 



Right Living 

in business, and in public life. Look out for the 
beams in your own eyes. 

When reforms are needed let them be brought 
about by strong, clear-headed, righteous reason 
with the sense of our own remissness in our duty, 
and not by the sudden violent passions of our out- 
raged feelings. Reforms will prove but abuses in 
disguise unless they are built up and sustained 
upon the firm foundation of our constant unselfish 
help and interest. 

And so you see, we always come back, you and 
I, to ourselves, to our duty, our work and our 
character. In ourselves lies the virtue of our 
citizenship and what we are that will our country 
be also. 

Take then this fine responsibility, and God grant 
we each and all may prove such citizens that our 
great Republic will be the better because we have 
been a part of it. 



THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE 

Evangeline Booths Commander y U, S. Salvation 

Army 

None but fools would think lightly of a gift so 
priceless as that of knowledge. How much more 

[ 122] 



Messages to Youth 

to be treasured than wealth, or sought for than 
fame! What a key of possibility placed within 
the hands of man, unlocking so many of the mys- 
teries of this world's entanglements, and giving a 
clue to so many of life's hidden meanings. 

Its pursuit has made thousands oblivious to pov- 
erty or pain, and the promise of more worthy dis- 
coveries beneath its restless waters has cast a halo 
around many an otherwise dark and dingy future. 
For after all, what pen could describe the inviting 
fascination of an awakening thirst to know.'^ 

The young artist realizes but little joy from the 
picture of today compared to that immense satis- 
faction derived from nursing buoyant ambitions 
of what the future productions of his paint and 
crayon are yet to be. 

The man of science, laboriously wrestling with 
the intricacies of some invention yet in its germ, 
forgets both fatigue and toil in the vision of some 
piece of mechanism of unique completeness which 
the promise of greater knowledge holds out to him. 

Does not the musician revel in the thought that 
the deeper he dives into music's soul the more there 
is in its worlds beyond? 

But the charms of knowledge are not to be com- 
pared to its potent value in emphasizing the char- 
acter and empowering the life. Although God has 
blessed, and does bless, the use of the most illiterate 

[ 123 ] 



Right Living 

and unlearned — and will ever do so, while such 
stand their feet upon an unreserved consecration 
— yet the culture of the mind is not to be lightly 
valued. It is too mighty a thing, and influential 
in all its far spreading issues. Wilful ignorance 
finds no favor in Heaven, neither will God work 
miracles to reward it. 

I cannot help thinking how much more efficient 
fighting in the Kingdom of God there would be 
if there was a little more seeking how to do it. 
Men too often neglect to learn the lessons of wis- 
dom and advice which God has caused to be written 
upon the pages of every life ; and there is no ques- 
tion but that ignorance and stupidity have been 
the reason of three parts of the spiritual wrecks 
which strew the shores of time. 

Here is a man who takes up farming. He gets 
from his surrounding neighbors every bit of in- 
formation that he can as to how to run the busi- 
ness ; he collects every particle of literature printed 
which is likely to be of any assistance to him ; he 
listens to every story of success and tale of mis- 
fortune, gathering all the experience within his 
reach, sits up at night to plan, and is up at day- 
break to test his schemes in the light of the fresh 
day. He must make the thing go, and this can 
only be done by solving agricultural problems, by 
getting a perfect knowledge of the business. 

[ 124] 



Messages to Youth 

But here is a man who gets converted ; he starts 
for Heaven ; it is a long road and a difficult one — 
there is much more up-hill work than down, but he 
undertakes the journey; he is to champion the 
cause of his Master, although he is quite a new 
hand at the task; he holds himself responsible for 
the saving and blessing of others, although it is 
the most intricate business one can be engaged in. 

He doffs the dress of the worldling and adopts 
the garb of the Christian (if not, he ought to), and 
enters into the battle with minds as cunning as 
their hearts are cruel with sin ; as brazen in black- 
ness as Heaven is fearless in purity — but where 
do we find him? In tens of thousands of cases 
with the slothful in business, leaving God to drag 
him to Heaven, instead of fighting his way there, 
talking of blessing others, when he has never 
studied how to do it. 

Does he overlook that all the devils in Hell will 
attack him, strongest and most subtle temptations 
will assail him, every conceivable barrier will be 
cast before him; that all the powers of evil, all 
the strength of vice, all the champions of rascality 
will form in line against him? 

I tell you that to get to Heaven you want to 
know the eccentricities of the road, so that you 
can make " straight paths for your feet,'' or you 
will never get there. It is a delusion for any soul 

[125] 



Right Living 

to ground his arms and expect that mere desire is 
going to win the race! You say he would never 
start but for the limitless measure of God's con- 
quering grace. Yes, but you forget that this 
conquering grace is only for those that are dili- 
gent and study to show themselves approved. You 
want to search into the inner meanings of the grace 
of God. 

The finest faculties of the greatest intellect can 
never fathom the bottom of those waters; the 
swiftest mind to grasp and understand can never 
soar to its full heights. Oh, that our prayer might 
be Solomon's : " A wise and understanding heart ! " 
He became so learned that his knowledge, over- 
shadowing his pen, poured out 1,005 songs and 
wrote 3,000 proverbs. In fact, it would be difScult 
to say what Solomon did not write. His writings 
stand, and they will stand while the ages roll. Oh, 
what a power was the knowledge of Solomon ! And 
yet the Bible tells us that even such knowledge as 
this — grand, great, and mighty as it is in all its 
far-reaching influences — without charity (love) 
is nothing! 

No wonder! Knowledge and charity, how can 
you possibly compare them.'* You may as well 
stand the rush-light by the sun, or expect the rain- 
drops to rival the ocean. How could knowing 
make up for being .^^ How could thinking make up 

[126] 



Messages to Youth 

for feeling? How could the brain — glorious as 
it is — take the place of the soul? One " vanishes 
away," the other is iminortal. Knowledge spring- 
ing from, revolving around, and resolving itself 
into charity, is one of Heaven's mightiest forces. 
Knowledge without love dwarfs the soul, narrows 
the sympathies and minimizes the character. 

Love that passes understanding, 
Angels would the mystery scan; 

Yet so tender that it reaches 
To the lowest child of man. 
Let me, Jesus, 

Better know redemption's plan. 

After all, men can know all about the path to 
Heaven, seeming to tread it so far as the letter 
tells, most perfectly; so walk by the lamp of 
knowledge that they never fall into the ditch of 
vice ; so as never to become a drunkard, or a gam- 
bler, or a wife beater, or a robber — indeed, they 
are very religious — but when before the scrutin- 
izing gaze of the Judgment Throne, or trying to 
get a look within the star-bedecked gates of love's 
own land, their righteousness will be found " filthy 
rags," and their debts too heavy to pay. And 
so, seeing that knowledge is so poor a treasure 
without charity, we thrust our hands deeper into 
the casket of God's gifts and draw from its clus- 

[127] 



Right Living 

tering gems the pearl of charity, the finishing 
touch to the Christian character, which, incorpo- 
rated into the very fabric of our lives, will indeed 
cause the divine in us to transcend the human 
and bring us back, as nothing else could, into the 
very image of God our Maker. 



STUDENTS AND CITIZENSHIP 

John BurJce^ Governor, North Dakota 

At request, I am writing a few words of con- 
gratulation and encouragement. I am sorry that 
I am not able to meet you in your chapel and talk 
to you at close range. It would be more satisfac- 
tory, for when you can hear the sound of a man's 
voice and grasp his hand you not only know him 
but you are in a position to judge of his sincerity. 
The best I can do under the circumstances, how- 
ever, is to engage you in a long-distance chat. 

I congratulate you upon the privilege of living 
in this day and age and in a country of such won- 
derful opportunities. You have entered this place 
for the purpose of equipping yourself for the bat- 
tle of life. Never has there been a time when an 
education was easier acquired or the training more 
,[128] 



Messages to Youth 

thorough or practical. You are surrounded with 
conveniences that the scholar of a generation ago 
never dreamed of, and education has only kept 
pace with the general growth and development of 
the country. The modern conveniences of life have 
taken away much of the former drudgery and con- 
tribute much to the happiness of man. But your 
happiness and success in life will depend largely 
upon your individual efforts. 

You have heard a great deal recently about the 
people governing themselves, and you are no doubt 
surprised to hear the subject broached at all, for 
as early as you can remember anything you will 
recall our boast on the Fourth of July and at 
other times that this is " a government of the 
people, for the people, and by the people,'' and of 
course it follows that in a government of the peo- 
ple the people govern themselves. You know of 
course that there is a difference of opinion as to 
how the people should govern themselves, some 
claiming that the government should be through 
representatives elected by the people, while others 
claim that the people would be better represented 
with a check on their representatives through the 
initiative, the referendum, and the recall, and by 
the election of United States Senators by a direct 
vote of the people. There can be no question as 
to the right of the people to adopt either system, 

[129] 



Right Ldving 

for we are living under a Constitution created by 
the people which can be changed by the people at 
will when necessary. 

Though it be said the delegate system has 
not proven entirely satisfactory, no great danger 
could come from its adoption, however, as the 
power is in the hands of the people to discard it 
and go back to the old system if found better. It 
is claimed that the more direct system of govern- 
ment would prevent lobbying, for what use would 
it be to the big corporations to secure the passage 
of a law if the people through the referendum could 
repeal the law; and of what use would it be for 
the big corporations to prevent the passage of a 
law if the people through the initiative could secure 
its passage. 

It is claimed in addition that it will keep the 
representatives in the straight and narrow way, 
for if they do not do their work as it should be 
done, the people through the initiative and ref- 
erendum will do it for them. It is further claimed 
that the people will seldom have to use either the 
initiative or the referendum, for with this reserve 
power in the hands of the people and the lobbyists 
eliminated from our legislative halls, legislative 
assemblies will pass the laws that the people need 
and repeal those which are unnecessary and op- 
pressive. 

[130] 



Messages to Youth 

On the other hand it is claimed that the people 
as a whole are not capable of voting intelligently 
on the passage of laws by means of the initiative 
and referendum and that this new system would 
encumber our statutes with useless and often vi- 
cious legislation. Possibly a useless law might be 
passed, the representatives of the people often 
enact useless ones. Possibly vicious laws might be 
passed, the books are filled with such that the 
people's representatives have passed, and very fre- 
quently the people cannot get rid of vicious laws 
passed by their representatives without the initia- 
tive and referendum. With them they can and will, 
for the whole people will not suffer long under 
vicious laws when it is within their power to repeal 
them. 

Is not the serious charge that the people as a 
whole are not capable a reflection upon the intelli- 
gence of the people and our splendid system of 
education? Is not the Constitution the most pro- 
found as well as the highest law in the state, and 
yet it is the people's law made by the people and 
amended and changed by the people so as to meet 
the exigencies of the time at their will. And do 
not the common ordinary citizens every day decide 
the most momentous questions of property rights 
and of life and death in the jury box of our courts 
where the country is really governed? Many peo- 

[131] 



Right Living 

pie no doubt are not able to draft a law — this is 
also true of many members of the legislative as- 
semblies throughout the Nation — but they are 
capable of deciding between right and wrong, of 
passing upon the fact as to whether a law is right 
or wrong, and is this not all that is necessary 
when there are so many among the masses who are 
capable and who will see that the law is in legal 
form and not at variance with the Constitution? 

There may be some question as to whether it is 
appropriate for me to argue either side of this 
question which may, if it has not already, become 
a political question. Without further discussing 
the merits let me say to you, my young friends, 
that the more responsibility you can place upon 
the citizen the better citizen you are likely to make 
of him. 

The more interest he takes in civic life the better 
he becomes informed on political subjects and the 
more he feels the responsibility that has been 
placed upon him. In all American history you 
can count the traitors among our soldiers and 
sailors upon one hand. Why is it that soldier or 
sailor is so loyal? What is there about his pro- 
fession that makes him patriotic and willing to die 
for his country? It is the responsibility that is 
placed upon him which makes him feel that his 
services are dedicated to his country and for 

[ 132] 



Messages to Youth 

which he is willing to die if necessary at the com- 
mand of his superior officer. 

You can perhaps call to mind an instance of 
some wild young fellow elected to public office, 
whom nearly everyone expected would go wrong, 
and yet who turned out to be a very efficient offi- 
cer. It was the responsibility that made the 
change. You can perhaps remember being de- 
tailed by your teacher to look after some special 
work, and while the work may not have been of 
great importance you will recall how careful you 
were, how anxious you were to do the work well, 
because you were charged with the responsibility 
of doing it. And so it is in life, the things that 
we do best are the things which we must give an 
account of or the things for which we are respon- 
sible. 

You will soon leave this institution and go out 
into the world to make your way in life. You 
will be charged with the responsibility of citizen- 
ship. If this is a government of the people there 
are none of us who can shirk any duty if we are 
to keep it a government of the people. There is 
one sure guide for every citizen, and that guide is 
conscience. Always be guided by your conscience. 
Take the moral side of every public question for it 
is bound to win in the end and you have the con- 
sciousness always of being right. Get on the right 

[ 133] 



Right Living 

side, stay on the right side. Be right in public 
life as well as in private life, not because it may 
win temporarily, but because it is right regardless 
of the consequences. Many who are honest in busi- 
ness are dishonest in politics. They seem to think 
that all is fair in politics, that there is a political 
license to be dishonest and that any tactics may be 
resorted to that will win. This a fatal mistake, 
for all trickery and fraud and dishonesty, whether 
in business or politics, whether in public life or 
private, will sooner or later be discovered and 
bring disgrace and infamy upon those who are 
guilty of it. 

I have said something about the modem con- 
veniences of life. Society has done much for us 
and the more it does the more we owe and the 
more we must do for society. Robinson Crusoe 
upon the island owed nothing and could do nothing 
for society. He had perfect freedom. He could 
do anything he wished. He could have any kind of 
a government he wanted. He could be a king, 
czar, emperor, or any other kind of a sovereign 
with only himself to rule, but he could n't have 
any of the modem conveniences of life or the com- 
panionship of men. He could n't have any electric 
lights, telephones, automobiles, school houses, 
churches, or any of the modem conveniences of 
life, and yet he had absolute, perfect freedom. 

[134] 



Messages to Youth 

But, oh ! how glad he would have been, living there 
all alone on the island, frightened at the sound of 
his own voice, lonesome almost unto death, to 
have seen the people coming and settling down 
around him and building school houses and 
churches, electric light and telephone plants, street 
car lines and railroads ! 

How glad the solitary castaway would have 
been to have exchanged some of his personal lib- 
erty for some of the modem conveniences of life 
and the companionship of man! But just as soon 
as the change is made and the people come and 
settle down around him and build school houses 
and churches, and put in water works and sewers, 
just so soon will it be necessary for each to give 
up some personal liberty for the benefit of all; just 
so soon will it be necessary to have some rules of 
civil conduct to regulate and control the conduct 
of men and women to prevent them from encroach- 
ing upon the rights of others. 

And this we know is emphatically the first duty 
that we owe to our country as good citizens, to 
respect always the rights of others and the laws 
which regulate, govern and control our conduct as 
citizens. 

Among the very best things that the immortal 
Lincoln left us in the way of advice is the fol- 
lowing: 

[135] 



Right Living 

Let respect for law be breathed by every American 
mother to the babe that prattles in her lap; let it be 
taught in the schools and churches ; let it be preached 
from the pulpit^, proclaimed in legislative halls and 
enforced in courts of justice; and in short, let it 
become the political religion of the Nation, and let 
the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the 
grave and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors 
and conditions sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars. 

If this was necessary in Lincoln's day it is more 
necessary now. Our government is more complex 
today. Since Lincoln's day the great corporations 
and trusts have organized; labor and capital are 
in continual warfare, the great development in 
electricity and along all commercial and industrial 
lines has made new laws necessary for the control 
and regulation of new conditions and has made a 
complex government today that was in Lincoln's 
day comparatively simple. The Constitution gives 
us the right of free speech, it gives freedom to 
the press, and we can invoke both for the repeal 
of any law but we cannot disobey the law without 
sacrificing our patriotism and our citizenship, for 
this is a government of the people in which we 
are all equals before the law; in which the laws 
operate upon all the people in such a way that 
no person gains any advantage over any other 
person under the law. What a beautiful theory 

[136] 



Messages to Youth 

of government! It does not always work out 
in accordance with the theory, but it is not the 
fault of the theory but the fault of those in power. 
If it does not work out in practice the remedy is 
in the hands of the people and every individual 
citizen is a part of the government. How it ought 
to make a young man's heart swell with pride when 
he realizes that he is a part of the greatest gov- 
ernment in the world, and how anxious he should 
be to do his part as a citizen as it comes to him 
day by day. 



THINKING AND DOING 

William A. Prendergast, Comptroller^ City of 
New York 

It is much more important that you should learn 
to think for yourselves than that you should try 
to remember everything that men have thought 
before you. It is only through those who think 
for themselves that progress is possible. 

It is very important to keep your bodies 
healthy. Never forget that the only thing which 
separates men from other animals is the power to 
think. A horse or a dog can run faster or jump 
farther than you can. It is only in thinking that 
you are better and higher than they. 

[137] 



Right Living 

There is one other thing just as important as 
learning to think, that is, doing right. Every 
one of you, when he has to choose between two 
courses, knows which is right and which is wrong. 
Never be mean. Never do an unkind thing to 
another person. In your relations with others 
there is only one rule worth while, " As you would 
that men should do to you, do you even so to 
them." 



ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS 

Caleb Powers^ Congressman from Kentucky 

In writing my views on something which would 
likely be of help to your student body I desire 
to say that there are several things essential to 
success. In the first place I regard character 
and moral worth as two of the best elements of 
success. There may be apparent success without 
them, but no real lasting success worthy of emula- 
tion has ever been attained without character and 
moral worth. 

Another thing very essential is the concentra- 
tion of effort. The day has passed when one can 
divert his energies into a dozen channels and be 
successful. The vocations are over-crowded ; com- 

[138] 



Messages to Youth 

petition is sharp; there is a tendency everywhere 
to specialize; and in order to be able successfully 
to compete with those foremost in the various lines 
and avocations to which men turn their time and 
thought, there must be a specialization on the 
part of the student of the present day. 

My advice to your student body is that each 
one of them make an inventory of his and her 
capabilities as early as possible, and choose some 
particular calling for which he is adapted and 
pursue it relentlessly. Turn neither to the right 
nor to the left; and refuse to be sidetracked or 
switched off. Set your whole soul, mind and en- 
ergy upon the goal to be attained, and keep at 
it with a dogged determination that knows no such 
word as fail. Even a plodder, a mediocre, can 
achieve success if he will go at it in this fashion. 



MASTERS OF DESTINY 

Miles Poindexter, Senator from Washington 

The brilliant John J. Ingalls, in his great son- 
net, personified "Opportunity'' as saying: 
" Master of human destinies am I.'' 

Opportunity will come to you, but you can 
[139] 



Right Living 

create your own opportunity, and mold events to 
the purpose you have in view. But to do this you 
must have a purpose, and fit yourself for it. To 
be masters of your own destiny you must have a 
clear idea of what you wish that destiny to be. 

Each one of you, in what ever emergencies may 
confront you, must rely upon himself. The de- 
cision is yours, and upon it, not upon chance, 
your happiness and success will depend. 



REAL PROGRESS 

G. W. Norrisy Senator from Nebraska 

As the common people have advanced in educa- 
tion and intelligence and the forms of government 
have become more liberal and the rights of the lib- 
erty of the people have become better protected 
by forms of law, the fraternal part of man has 
increased in a corresponding degree. Men realize 
now, as they never realized in the ignorant past, 
that the real test of happiness is to be able to 
do good for your fellow men. No man can be 
happy who lives unto himself alone. The selfish- 
ness of greed, whether it be directed toward prom- 
inence in society, toward power in the political 
world, or toward the possession of wealth, will al- 
ways bring misery in the end to the person who 

[ 140] 



Messages to Youth 

is thus moved. No one can be truly happy unless 
he has a fraternal feeling for the welfare of human- 
ity. No one can have a light heart and stand in 
the presence of suffering and misery. No matter 
how the individual might be clothed with power or 
how fully he might live in luxurious and wealthy 
surroundings he can get no real enjoyment out 
of life if he makes no attempt to alleviate the suf- 
fering of his fellow men who are less fortunate 
than himself, and in the end, when we come to 
close up the book and cross over the river, the 
man will get the most comfort in the solemn hour, 
who is able to look back over his life and see all 
along the pathway emblems of his generosity, his 
honesty, his charity, and his mercy. 



COURAGE AND SUCCESS 

Eugene N. Foss, Ex-Governor^ Massachusetts 

There are plenty of opportunities for young 
men of courage. There are no opportunities worth 
while for young men who have not a good measure 
of courage. It 's a good thing to bear these points 
in mind. 

We want more young men of character and 
[ 141 ] 



Right Living 

courage to interest themselves in public matters. 
The public business demands business management. 
The field of public business is rapidly becoming 
more open to alert and intelligent young business 
men who possess the courage of their convictions 
and the force and earnestness of character which 
command the respect and allegiance of the public. 



THE OBJECT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE 
Sirneon E. Baldwin^ Governor^ Connecticut 

I am inclined to think that human punishment 
has legitimate objects other than human reform. 
Reform is a good thing, but it is not the only 
thing. It saves man from a life of misconduct 
and disorder, but society needs saving from the 
criminal, quite as much as he needs saving from 
sin. " The wages of sin is death." To that end 
it logically tends. The extinction of sin may re- 
quire the extinction of the sinner, at least in this 
world. 

The punishment of sin on earth is partly, at 
least, left to human government. When it takes the 
shape of crime, government must meet it with 
the strong hand, and add the human sanction to 
the divine, the sentence of the courts to the sen- 
tence of the conscience and the community. 

[ 142 ] 



Messages to Youth 

President Woolsey, of Yale University, in his 
able work on political science, came to the con- 
clusion that the whole theory of criminal punish- 
ment which rested on solid ground was that to 
punish was to give the offender his deserts, and 
that government had a right to use its power for 
that end. 

This seems to me far more logical and far more 
reasonable than the doctrine of the Italian human- 
itarian school that the right to punish rests only 
on the duty to educate the ignorant and reform 
the vicious. 



WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

R. P. Smithy President, Kansas Wesleyan 
University 

God helps men through men. He cannot, or at 
least He seems not to, help them without human 
agency. This is no doubt because God is a spirit, 
and has no voice, no hands, no feet. If He wants 
to speak He uses human lips. If He wants a 
message carried He uses human feet. If He wants 
in sympathy and tenderness to touch the troubled 
brow He must borrow human hands. If He wants 
to contribute to the poor, to build a church, a 
college, a hospital, or to send a missionary to the 
foreign fields, He is compelled to use money we 

[ 143 ] 



Right LdVing 

call ours. So when our lips speak words of kind- 
ness and helpfulness, they may be called divine 
lips ; or when our feet run errands of mercy they 
may be called divine feet; or when our hands in 
tenderness and sympathy wipe away the tear of 
care and sorrow that may be called divine hands. 
In rendering a divine service they become divine. 
Is it too much to say that, in this way, God uses 
these human members as His own? If not, then 
how close kindly and helpful service bring us to 
God. 



THE MAIN THING 

Rev. Charles M. Sheldon^ Author and Lecturer 

Life is not mainly play time, but work time. We 
are here in this world not to play but to work. We 
need to play only just as much as is necessary to 
keep our working energy in good order. No one 
needs to play more than is necessary to give him 
a strong mind and body for work. The person 
who feels that he must play a great deal is an 
intellectual invalid. The healthiest thing that most 
people can do is to use their brains a great deal. 
Brain work does not kill or exhaust half so much 
as physical dissipation. Education is worth too 
much to consider it lightly. Do the main thing, 

[ 144 ] 



Messages to Youth 

hold to the main purpose, and life will amount 
to something for all of you because you will be 
getting out of the school course the things that 
will make for manhood or womanhood. This is 
my wish for every one of you. I send this greet- 
ing with great good will and with best wishes for 
success to all of you. 



UPPER CURRENTS 

J. R. Miller^ Late President, Presbyterian Board 
of Publication 

The power of friendship is almost omnipotent, 
whether for good or evil. We never can know 
what we owe to our friends who are beautiful and 
worthy, what they are to us, what they are doing 
in the building of our character, and what enrich- 
ing of life they are giving to us. Every friend 
whom we take into our fellowship, whether for a 
shorter or a longer stay, builds something into 
the walls of the temple we are rearing. A pure, 
gentle friendship becomes in its influence like a 
holy presence, in which we can do nothing un- 
worthy. It works in us, transforming us, inspir- 
ing in us all upward inspirations and reachings. 
Watch your friendships. Some who would be 

[ 145 ] 



Right Living 

your friends will only bring ruin upon every fair 
beauty and every holy hope. Countless wrecks 
of young lives, which had in them marvelous pos- 
sibilities of good, have been made through mis- 
taken choices of early friends. Accept the 
friendships only which will bring you heavenly 
inspirations. No one is a safe friend with whom 
we may not pray. 



IMPORTANCE OF CHARACTER 

John Cavanaughy President, University of 
Notre Dame 

You have seen men rise like the rocket and fall 
like the stick. You have seen brilliant men rise 
with amazing rapidity in popular esteem and then 
suddenly fall into obscurity or worse as a wounded 
bird stops in his flight and flounders earthward. 
You have seen men fail of success, but have you 
ever known a man to fail for lack of talent? Have 
not men in every instance failed for want of 
character? 

The wise man will study his character, and 
know his weakness in order to be on his guard 
against it. Someone has said that the way to 
attain old age is to get an incurable disease in 

[ 146] 



Messages to Youth 

one's youth and spend all one's life in taking 
care of it. Similarly, the way to be safe and 
strong is to know our weak spot and to be mind- 
ful during all our life and to guard against it. 



LIVING UP TO YOUR HIGHEST 
POSSIBILITIES EVERY DAY 

William G. Hubbard, Vice President, American 
Peace Society 

There is an innate tendency in youth to think, 
" I will do better later on ; when I am grown I 
will be strong, intelligent, good." So youth takes 
his ease, lets things drift, and waits for the future 
day to endow him with character. Character never 
comes by endowment. It is not a thing bestowed ; 
it is the development of a being. 

Character grows, like a tree, slowly, by the 
accretions of each day. Yet it is unlike the tree 
in that the tree grows without effort, by the 
accretions of sunshine, air and soil, while human 
character develops only by effort, by lessons 
learned, knowledge gained, and duties performed. 

This effort should be both subjective and ob- 
jective. First, BE! Second, DO! What a man 
does, grows out of what he is. BE what you ought 
to be. Then you will DO the right things. 

[147] 



Right Living 

Seek the divine guidance; then plan for the 
work of a useful life. Have a high and strong 
purpose. Eliminate all personal habits that 
weaken your efforts, or hinder the accomplishment 
of your purpose. 

Help somebody! Help as many as you can. 
That person is greatest who touches the largest 
number of other lives for their good. Think much 
of others and little of self. Then as the years 
go on, your life will become a luxury to yourself 
and a blessing to others. 

Do your best every day; not once a week, or 
occasionally. It is the every day habit that de- 
termines character. The occasional good spurt 
is good for that moment. But the every day habit 
is the soil out of which the tree " Character " 
grows. Hence the importance of the motto: 

" Live up to your highest possibilities every 
day." 



BE STRONG 

W. A. Quayle^ Bishop^ Methodist Episcopal 
Church 

Be strong! That is the message to the men 
and women who would be worthy of the coming 
time. Weaklings are not robust enough to achieve 

[148] 



Messages to Youth 

when the rush of the world is on as it now is. 
Therefore, it becomes youth, in preparation, to 
put on strength. In the gymnasium of brains 
they need to exercise unceasingly, and character 
is to be their acquisition. Brains without char- 
acter cannot do this world's business. 



"AND .THEY THAT WERE READY 
WENT IN'^ 

Robert J. Aley, President, University of Maine 

In order to live by law and not by chance we 
must become disciples of the three g's — grace, 
grit, and gumption. We must cultivate grace 
until we have enough of it to take the gibes and 
taunts of our fellows without any disturbance of 
our calm or any warping of our judgment. It 
was grace that made Noah able to withstand the 
taunts and jeers of the dry weather prophets of 
his day and successfully complete his work. We 
must have grit enough to stick to our tasks and 
do the hard things of life without a murmur. It 
was Grant's grit that differentiated him from the 
other Union leaders and made him the nation's 
hero. We must have gumption enough to see 
things in their right proportion and do things at 

[ 149] 



Right Living 

the right time. To do this, we must be alert, open 
minded, responsive, and adaptable. 

The world is a fight. We all love a fighter. The 
winner is he who never loses courage because of 
defeat but who always comes back better prepared 
and more ready to enter in. 



THE PLAIN PATH 

Mary E. Wooley, President^ Mount Holyoke 
College 

The plain path of idealism means taking for 
the ideals of life integrity and pure thoughts and 
generous impulses and noble purposes and just 
behavior — love for God and for one's fellow men. 
Is that the way along which you and I are try- 
ing to walk — not for our own sakes alone, but 
for these others also? 

" This is the way," said the prophet ; " I am 
the way," said the Master. " Walk ye in it," 
commanded the prophet ; " Follow thou me," urged 
the Master. 

The plain path seems far from plain sometimes 
when we are trying to adjust our own belief and 
new conceptions with our impatience, our unwill- 
ingness to wait for our conceptions to grow as 

[150] 



Messages to Youth 

we grow in wisdom and knowledge ; but plain, nev- 
ertheless, when we realize that the one thing which 
Christ asks is that w^e should follow Him, our 
highest Ideal — the Way. 



ON MAKING LIFE ATTRACTIVE 

Booker T. Washington, Principal^ Tuskegee 
Institute 

The old idea of life used to be that it was 
something to be gotten rid of as soon as possible; 
that it was something to be shaken off, and was 
not connected in any large degree with the life 
that is to come. More and more we are learning, 
however, that the new idea of life is that we are 
a continuous being; that the life in this world is 
as important as the life in the next world ; that we 
simply continue to live after we pass from this 
stage of being into another stage of being. In a 
word, the idea is becoming more and more empha- 
sized that life is something to be retained; that 
life is something to be made great ; something to 
be improved, and it seems to me that as students, 
you ought to learn to get all you can out of 
life. I believe it is impossible for a person to 
live a high life, a noble life in the future world 
who does not live a high, noble life in this world. 

[151] 



Right Living 

' I believe that very largely in another life we 
are what we live in this life. We are certainly 
preparing ourselves here for what we are to be 
in another life; so we should practice the habit 
day by day of getting all we can out of life. 

Be sure we get the best things in this life, be 
sure we do the best things in this life, be sure we 
learn higher things in this life. The person who 
has learned to love trees, to love corn, to love 
flowers, or has learned to get enjoyment and pleas- 
ure out of rain, out of sunshine — out of every- 
thing, in a word, that is put here by our Creator 
for our enjoyment — is the person who is con- 
tented and happy. Perhaps there are many things 
we have not yet discovered, but I do not believe 
there is a thing put here on this earth that is not 
meant for our use, to give us enjoyment and 
comfort. 

My experience has been that one gets out of 
life what he puts into it. If he puts hard, earnest 
study and effort into his life, he gets pleasure, 
satisfaction and enjoyment out of it. You find 
an individual who is constantly complaining of 
those about him being selfish and cold in their 
treatment of him; you examine into the cause of 
that individual's complaint and you will find that 
he is cold and selfish himself. We get out of every 
department of life just about what we put into it. 

[152] 



Messages to Youth 

Life should give us opportunity for the highest 
mental, physical, and spiritual enjoyment. You 
want to learn, in a word, to fill your life with 
all the best that is in the world. Fill your life 
with all that is best by continually seeking out 
what is best, what is noblest, what is highest and 
best in men, in books, in nature so far as the treas- 
uries of nature have been discovered, and you will 
find with all of these highest and best things in 
life your lives will be successful. 



HEALTH AND HAPPINESS 

Harvey Wileify Pure Food Expert 

I cannot say much in two hundred words that 
will be of permanent value, and yet I realize that 
it is not the length of an address which determines 
the amount of good which it does. 

I have an abiding interest in young people. 
There are many crops produced from our forests 
and fields amounting in all in value to about ten 
billion .dollars a year. We have a tremendous 
output of our factories, valued at probably much 
more. Our mines and minerals may produce about 
half as much more. Nationally, in round num- 
bers, our annual production of wealth may be 

[153] 



Right Living 

placed at about twenty-five billions of dollars, but 
there is one crop which to my mind is worth a 
great deal more than that, and that is our crop of 
children and young people. 

I lately said before the National Educational 
Association at Chicago, that if I were allowed to 
care for the health of the children of the country 
I did not care who doctored the adults. To me, 
one of the most important things for young peo- 
ple is their health, those habits of life, sobriety, 
honesty, industry, recreation, sleeping and eating, 
which make healthy bodies. Crime is recognized 
as a disease and may be induced by improper 
nutrition or bad habits of different kinds, because 
the disease of crime is very much like the ordi- 
nary diseases which we bring upon ourselves. 

The length of life is determined largely in 
childhood and many a boy and girl has already 
planted the seeds of disease and death before he 
is twenty. The average age of man is but little 
over forty years and the age of a man's maximum 
usefulness is between fifty and sixty years, in 
other words, a man dies in this country, sixteen 
years before he reaches the age of maximum utility. 

What threatens us most are bad habits, addic*- 
tion to drugs, immoral practices, and over stimula- 
tion of the nerves, through the drug habit, by the 
use of tobacco, alcohol, opium, cocaine and kin- 

[ 154] 



Messages to Youth 

dred nerve destroyers. All these should be 
avoided as death is avoided. 

Our schools should teach perhaps less mathe- 
matics and more hygiene, less language and more 
dietetics, less grammar and a better knowledge 
of grain. All these things are educational, and 
all useful, and all knowledge of this kind will pro- 
mote health, happiness, and life. The thoroughly 
nourished and well trained youth is not likely to 
go astray. 

My message to you is to live simply, obey par- 
ents and teachers, subject your will to that of the 
law, be not only good boys and girls but become 
splendid men and women. 



GRADUATION 

W, H. P. FauncCy President^ Brown University 

I wonder if your students realize what the word 
graduation really means. Of course literally it 
means rising to a higher grade. We have seen 
the old-fashioned canal boat enter the lock, wait 
for the inrush of water, and then slowly rise, foot 
by foot, until the gates swing open on the other 
side and the boat passes out on a permanently 

[155] 



Right Living 

higher level; that is graduation. It is to rise, 
whether in a moment or in four years, to a new 
elevation of purpose and effort. It is to leave 
below the purposeless life, the fickle, transient 
aim, and rise into a life self-governed because self- 
dedicated, strong because lofty. 



HOW TO LIVE THE REAL LIFE 

Emerson Houghs Author 

I do not think that life ought to be a sorrowful 
but a happy experience for any human being. It 
is not necessary to be melancholy in order to be 
good. Certainly the sour and embittered spirits 
of the world are not those which are made wel- 
come. Have you never noticed, on the other hand, 
how glad you are to see the man or woman who 
is cheerful, who has a smile or a word of hope, 
or something pleasant to say about someone else? 
It is not necessary to be deceitful or insincere in 
order to be kindly and human. If you have two 
courses before you, take the cheerful and hopeful 
course by preference — it will carry you farther 
in life. 

Next to a feeling of confidence that we belong 
in life and are meant to succeed and be happy in 
life, I should rate the insistence upon having that 
[156] 



Messages to Youth 

which IS our natural birthright. This means not 
only energy but pluck, resilience, ability to get 
up and come again. I doubt if any great suc- 
cess in life is made by any man who does not in 
some measure possess this quality of determina- 
tion. It is what we call pluck. You do not always 
admire the man who has good judgment, or a. good 
mind, but you nearly always admire the man who 
has that quality of pluck. You will find it in 
the history of nearly every great man. The great 
victories of the world have been won through its 
exercise. If you have pluck, you can do much 
with small equipment. When the other man is 
quitting the field, you march back upon the field 
and begin again. Be like Paul Jones, who was 
" just beginning to fight." It may be late in life 
before success comes to you, but insist that it 
shall come some time, up to the measure of your 
own deserts. 

The author, De Morgan, began writing novels 
when he was seventy years of age. Many suc- 
cessful authors have passed middle age before 
they reached any reward for their labors. The 
same is true of artists, business men, professional 
men, all sorts of men. " Do n't give up the ship." 

It is a great thing to know what you want to 
do in life, but if you cannot solve the question off- 
hand — and perhaps not even your parents or 

[157] 



Right Laving 

your instructors can solve it for you — do not be 
discouraged. Sarch your own soul until you find 
what you want to do, and then keep on trying to 
do it. In time you will do it. Many great suc- 
cesses in life have been made by men who for ten 
years, or twenty, passed from one stepping stone 
to another, their eyes on the farther shore, which 
eventually they reached. 

Remember that you are, after all, no matter 
how exalted your spirit, not altogether superior 
to your physical body. Make a servant of it, not 
a companion. Train it, subdue it, conquer it and 
use it. Do not let it conquer you or use you. This 
does not mean that you shall become a slave to ath- 
letics, or that you shall follow sport to the exclusion 
of work. It does mean that you need not only 
occasional but regular and continuous exercise of 
rational sort. There are two worlds, one of the 
indoors and one of the out of doors. Live in 
them both, and learn that the latter is the larger. 

The maxims of the age would teach us, did 
we allow it, to sacrifice all for the sake of making 
of one's self an efficient business machine. This 
is to say that the only success is material success. 
Your material rewards indeed will be the measure 
of your success iri a very large degree. Do not 
be ashamed to make money, and do not be ashamed 
to go into business, for the business man is quite 

[158] 



Messages to Youth 

as useful as the professional man or the artist. 
But rest assured you cannot be happy, and you 
cannot be useful to the full measure of your use- 
fulness, if you make of yourself a mere machine. 
Above all things be human. Stop to laugh and 
talk with your friends, and add always to the 
circle of those with whom you may thus stop and 
laugh and talk. It is a good world, and not a dis- 
mal one. It is a growing place, and not a place 
of torture. 



THE AVAILABILITY OF OUR 
KNOWLEDGE 

Orison Swett Marderiy Author 

The great question which confronts the student 
in the practical world is " What can you do with 
what you know?" Can you transmute your 
knowledge into power? The ability to read Latin 
diplomas is not a test of true education ; a stuffed 
memory does not make an educated man. 

" The only knowledge that a man has is the 
knowledge he can use.'' Everywhere we see peo- 
ple who know a great deal, but who cannot use 
their knowledge. They are conscious of riches 
stored up in their mental reservoirs, but they can- 
not use them and are really poor, because their 

[159] 



Right Living 

wealth IS not available; it has not been trans- 
muted into life power. 

The knowledge that can be utilized constitutes 
the only education worthy of the name. There 
are thousands of college-bred men and women in 
this country who are loaded down with knowledge 
they have never been able to use, to make available 
for working purposes. There is a great difference 
between absorbing knowledge, making a sponge of 
one's brain, and transmuting every bit of knowl- 
edge into power, into working capital. 

As the silkworm transmutes the mulberry leaf 
into satin, so you should transmute your knowl- 
edge into practical wisdom. 

The great object of an education, and the high- 
est meaning of a vocation, should be to increase 
mental power. To be educated is not to repeat 
things like a parrot, but to grasp principles with 
vigor, to analyze, to synthesyze, to think consec- 
utively, logically. 

The head should not be a mere reservoir filled 
with theories and facts, but a power-house to gen- 
erate mental energy. Humboldt says : 

" The aim of every man should be to secure 
the highest and most harmonious development of 
his powers to a complete and consistent whole," 

" Know thyself " is the theoretical end of cul- 
ture. " Use thyself " is the practical end. 

[ 160 ] 



Messages to Youth 

It is through education that the youth first 
finds himself. It is in the class room he first 
learns to use his brain eifectively. Education is 
to the student what light is to the diamond. It 
reveals the beauty of the stone. No one knows 
what is in the rough diamond; but when it is 
ground, and light is let into the interior, then 
we see its quality. Every flaw, every defect, every 
virtue is revealed. 

The light does not change the quality of the 
stone. It helps to bring out what was there orig- 
inally. 

The school training is the cutting and polish- 
ing of the human diamond. It reveals its possi- 
bilities and brings out its qualities. The right 
kind of education helps the student to get a better 
grip upon himself. It teaches him the power of 
sustained focusing of the thought. 

It is incomprehensible why thousands of our 
bright young men and young women are satisfied 
to remain rough diamonds, when there are such 
possibilities of brilliancy and beauty of life im- 
prisoned in them and so many opportunities for 
their development. " That there should one man 
die ignorant who had the capacity for knowledge, 
this I call a tragedy,'^ says Carlyle. 

Everywhere we see young men and young 
women tied to the very ordinary positions all their 

[161] 



Right Living 

lives, simply because, though they had good brains, 
they were never cultivated, never developed. They 
never tried to improve themselves, or to make 
the most of the opportunities offered them for an 
education. Many of them cannot spell correctly, 
cannot punctuate, many of them know nothing 
about grammar or English composition, and can- 
not write an intelligible letter. 

The quality of the beginnings will determine 
the quality of the endings. 

The boy who shirks or neglects his studies will 
work to a disadvantage all his life time. He may 
think he is getting the best of the teacher when 
he cheats at examinations but he is really cheating 
himself of the very foundation of his success. The 
skipped problems in his youth, his little deceptions, 
will keep bobbing up in his, mature life to trip 
him up and hamper his progress. 

I know of a young man who possesses consid- 
erable ability, but he uses such frightful gram- 
mar and appears so illiterate, that he has never 
been able to achieve half what he might be capable 
of achieving. 

The young man cannot understand why he does 
not advance. He knows that he is much abler 
than many of those whom he sees constantly going 
above him; but he has never taken any steps to 
make up for his deficiency by self-study, and now 

[162] 



Messages to Youth 

he finds himself in middle life with a splendid 
ability which is tied down, handicapped, clogged 
by his ignorance, which he is apparently ignorant 
of, and that is the worst, the most hopeless, kind 
of ignorance. 

He has lost many good positions because he 
could not write a businesslike letter or carry on 
an intelligent conversation with customers. He 
used such deplorable English that his employers 
did not dare let him come in contact with their 
customers. Hamilton W. Mabie says: 

There is no place in the modern world for the un- 
skilled; no one can hope for any genuine success who 
fails to give himself the most complete special edu- 
cation. Good intentions go for nothing and industry 
is thrown away if one cannot infuse a high degree of 
skill into his work. The man of medium skill depends 
upon fortunate conditions for success; he cannot 
command it^ nor can he keep it. The trained man 
has all the advantages on his side ; the untrained man 
invites all the tragic possibilities of failure. 

Many people think that knowledge which they 
cannot directly apply in their work is useless. 

Webster said he once used an anecdote which 
he had remembered for fourteen years and never 
used before, in a very telling way, because just 
the right moment had arrived when it fitted the 
occasion completely. 

The youth who does not believe in studying 
C 163 ] 



Right Laving 

things that he is not going to use in practical life, 
will always be a narrow man, and will advertise 
his own smallness, his false economy, to everybody. 
He will not need to tell people that he took a 
short cut in his education, did not study geometry, 
logic, because he was going to be a merchant or 
engineer. Anybody with any discernment will see 
that. They will detect his limited knowledge in 
his inability to express himself. By the way he 
handles his subjects, they can see that he lacks 
the ability to grasp great ideas. They see that 
he is embarrassed and feels out of place even at 
the discussion of current events. He will look 
blank and confused at the most ordinary literary 
or historical reference. In other words, his super- 
ficiality will always be cropping out to embarrass 
him. 

On the other hand, the broad, intelligent, the 
literary trained mind will always give confidence 
and add to one's self-respect, two of the gates to 
power. 

Considered even from an economical standpoint, 
nothing pays so well as a superlatively trained 
mind, a magnificent self-investment. You will 
think more of yourself if you are well mentally 
equipped, with your mind so disciplined and trained 
that you always feel at home in any company. 

Education of the right kind does not make its 
[ 164] 



Messages to Youth 

recipient a snob but it arouses and quickens what 
is noble and generous in one's nature. It does 
not harden the heart, or make one ungrateful to 
those who have helped us. The right sort of an 
education refines the nature and elevates the ideals. 

Education is a curse when we pervert it to our 
own selfish use. It is a curse when it becomes an 
instrument of greed, when it marbleizes the affec- 
tions and makes us callous to the obligations of 
others. 

The larger a man becomes, the keener and finer 
are his needs. Every enlargement of his capa- 
bilities by the sharpening of his faculties, by cul- 
ture, by thinking and contemplation, not only 
increases his own demands for a greater variety 
of mental and moral food, but also increases his 
obligations to the world, for he has more to give 
to others. 

Large opportunities impose large obligations. 

A real education is to the scholar what the 
grindstone is to the scythe. It sharpens his fac- 
ulties, makes him more efficient, gives him a keener 
zest for life, and enlarges his field for good. Added 
culture to a man is like added power to a telescopic 
lens; it enlarges his vision and magnifies the im- 
portance of his opportunities. 

The fate that is to decide your future is right 
inside of you. You hold the key to your own 
[165] 



, Right lAving 

destiny. No one else has it. You can open the 
door of life or close it, just as you wish. 

Let each one of you resolve that you will set 
a lofty standard for your conduct, that there 
shall be nothing cheap, ordinary, commonplace, or 
dishonest in your career. Let others see by your 
speech, your conduct, that you are of a finer 
type of manhood, that there is something superior 
about you. Wherever you go in the world, or 
whatever you do, never lose sight of the fact that, 
having had the inestimable blessing of superior 
educational advantages, you cannot afford to lower 
your standards, cannot afford to do a mean, low, 
contemptible or dishonest act. Do not be an 
ordinary man. Overtop your title, whatever it 
may be. Be bigger than your vocation, larger 
than any book you write, any picture you may 
paint, any merchandise you may sell. 



A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT 

Eugene Noble, Presidenty Dickinson College 

If I could convey a word of encouragement, it 
would be this — that there are always great places 
open for great men, that there are always good 

[ 166 ] 



Messages to Youth 

places open for good men, that there are always 
honors and distinctions for those qualified to wear 
them, that America is now as never before the 
land of opportunity and invitation. But now as 
never before the qualities of industry, of pains- 
taking exactness, of patient devotion, of rectitude, 
of moral keenness of vision are necessary. One can- 
not possess the worthy things of life without pay- 
ing the price for them, and the price of a worthy 
place in human society is approved character. 



SHOULD I GO TO COLLEGE.? 

A. W. H arris y P resident ^ Northwestern University 

Some of the most important decisions must be 
made in youth when there is little experience to 
guide. The choice of a lifework and the getting 
of education are such matters. What rules ought 
to guide? Shall the boy leave school when he 
has completed the grammar course ? Shall he con- 
tinue through the high school.? Shall he then go 
on to college? 

College training is expensive ; not that the money 
outlay is very great, but that the college takes 
four years of time, and four years seems a very 
large part of the whole life of a man as he looks 

[167] 



Right Living 

forward from sixteen or seventeen. The decision 
must be made just at the time when independence 
and ambition are growing, and are suggesting to 
the boy the worthy desire to be at work and pay 
his own way. With that desire every man sympa- 
thizes ; and in many cases it ought to be followed. 

I give the young man unstinted admiration for 
the courage it takes to invest four years — usually 
the only capital he has at the time — in getting 
a college education, with faith that he is making 
a good investment. 

Given the right kind of a boy, there is no better 
investment. After all, the early years are not 
very profitable as business years. Youth is the 
time when a man earns least money and earns it 
with the most effort; youth is the time when a 
man learns most and learns it with the least effort. 
This is a safe rule: When in doubt about the 
wisdom of further study, keep on studying. Stop 
when you are sure you ought to stop. 

The school or college is not the only place in 
which a man gets an education; but it offers the 
easiest and most economical education. It gives 
the beginnings of education, and the beginnings 
are the really hard parts. There are difficulties 
in conducting a mine ; but the ablest miner is help- 
less until he finds a paying claim. It is one of 
the best services of the college that helps in finding 

[168] 



Messages to Youth 

the claim. A college course may be worth while 
even if it never gives a financial profit. There 
are other assets. The college opens avenues in 
many fields of culture and achievement. It is a 
poor fellow who gets through college without hav- 
ing caught something of the spirit of poetry and 
some knowledge of it, who has not read some of 
the great books; and gathered some inspirations 
from the great sciences and scientists ; who has 
not learned to know some of the great men of all 
times; who has not had profit from four years 
spent under high minded teachers and fellow stu- 
dents of pure and valiant adventure. 

The college man puts in four years as a part 
of a community, the most unselfish, high-minded 
and wholesome to be found in America, The man 
who can live through the college years with col- 
lege boys and not be the better for it has 
either been surprisingly unfortunate in the se- 
lection of his college or is very unresponsive 
to good influences. These years will have accus- 
tomed him to the vital acceptances of service as 
the great thing in life; they will have given him 
many abiding friendships with other men of fine 
mould, and they will have endowed him for life 
with a few of those closest friendships — so sel- 
dom made after the time of youth — which are 
of abiding value as life's best treasures. 

[169] 



Bight Living 

Very likely I would be having a bigger income 
if, in 1876, I had gone into business instead of 
entering the freshman class at college; but I am 
sure — entirely sure — that if, with my personal 
experience I were back again in the days of decision 
with the broad road straight ahead inviting me 
to seek an immediate income, and at the side the 
footpath to college — I'm sure, I say, I'd make 
again the same choice of the old way to the halls 
in which I spent four happy years; to me, great 
years. 



THE LARGER LIFE 

W. J. Bryan^ Secretary of State 

Is there any excuse for not leading the larger 
life? Is there any excuse that any man can give 
for not being willing to make use of all his powers ? 
Shall we allow the materialist to speak of being 
" more liberal '' than we are, when he refuses to 
consider the most important element in life? I 
resent the charge of narrowness that the atheist 
brings against the Christian. The Chrisian is in 
a position to enjoy every good thing that an 
atheist can enjoy, and, in addition, those larger, 
better things that an atheist cannot enjoy. I hope 

[170] 



Messages to Youth 

the time is not far distant when the egotism of 
those who think they are stronger than Christians 
in mental power will vanish, and when they will 
no longer assume a superiority over those who 
allow Christ to lead them into the larger way. 

What is there that Christ would take from us 
that has value in it? Does He deny us the food 
that we need? No, the Christian is at liberty 
to eat ; aye, not only at liberty, but it is his duty 
to eat enough to lift his body to the maximum of 
efficiency. 

If the Christian's passion is service, how can he 
render the largest service unless the instrument of 
service is in good order? All that Christ would 
deny to us in the form of food is excessive food, 
food that, instead of helping, harms — the kind 
of food that burns the stomach out and makes 
man old while he is yet young. If Christians 
find that, instead of looking for something to eat 
they are traveling from one watering place to an- 
other trying to improve their digestion, they can- 
not blame Christ. It may be because they pay too 
much attention to the body and not enough to 
the soul. Christ requires no physical concessions 
that are not for our good. There is not a good 
habit that Christ does not allow. He only pro- 
hibits those habits that decrease our strength and 
reduce our capacity for work — habits that waste 
[171] 



Right Living 

our bodies and make them unfit to be temples for 
the indwelling of His spirit. 

So, in the intellectual world, what is there in 
the range of science, or history, or poetry, or art, 
that Christ forbids us to enjoy? All that He asks 
is that we shall remember that all these things are 
the means to an end. Where will you find higher 
art than in the Christian world? Where will you 
find sweeter poetry than in the Christian world? 
All that Christ asks is that we shall train the 
mind for usefulness — that we shall not glory in 
our minds merely because we enjoy intellectual 
pursuits, but because a larger mind can do a large 
work, because a more extended vision can be of 
greater assistance to those who rely upon the 
educated to see in advance coming dangers and 
warn against them. All these things are but the 
means we use for the development of that which is 
highest in life and best in man, 

Christ does not restrain our activities along 
any line of legitimate work. On the contrary. He 
furnishes a higher incentive and a larger purpose. 
In domestic life, in business life, in political life, 
everywhere, the Christian is free to satisfy every 
worthy ambition, every noble impulse. The only 
injunction laid upon him is that God shall come 
first and all other things afterward. But this one 
injunction does not fetter eflfort; it simply directs 

[172] 



Messages to Youth 

one's energies. It is the compass by which we steer 
if we would sail the sea of life in safety. 

There are no happier homes than the homes of 
Christendom, and the happiest homes in Christen- 
dom are those in which God is enthroned and in 
which His will is the supreme law of the house- 
hold. 

Nowhere is business more successfully conducted 
than in the Christian nations; nowhere does it 
rest upon a more substantial basis. And in the 
Christian nations no business men build more sure- 
ly than those who daily live as in His presence. 

Materialism can not deal successfully even with 
the material things of life. A spiritual viewpoint 
is necessary if one would see clearly; no one is 
farsighted who does not see farther than the eye 
can reach. Faith is a spiritual extension of the 
vision, and no one can afford to be without it. 
Faith also is necessary if it would resist the temp- 
tations which, if yielded to, drag men down. In 
order to successfully withstand the insidious al- 
lurements that beset life's way we must under- 
stand that wrongdoing automatically recoils upon 
the wrongdoer; that God is not mocked, and that 
no human effort can prevent a harvest according 
to the sowing. One is sure to fall if his only re- 
straint is the fear of being detected by others. 
There are too many chances for escape from the 

[173] 



Right Uving 

vigilance of others to make the fear of being 
caught a sufficient barrier to wrongdoing. No 
other guardian can take the place of the inner 
monitor — the voice that bids the " wicked flee 
when no man pursueth." 

Nowhere does Christ enlarge one's conception 
of life more than in the conduct of public affairs. 
Those who exercise authority have special need 
to give weight to the things that affect the heart. 
Only when one knows the heart can he judge men, 
and only when his heart is knit to the hearts of his 
fellows can he enter into the spirit of brotherhood. 
A condescending service is not sufficient; man is 
not fit to serve unless he recognizes that he is 
serving those who are attached to him by undis- 
soluble ties, and only when he understands Christ's 
measure of greatness does his ambition become 
helpful to others as well as to himself. In no 
other walk of life is it more necessary for one 
to be guided by conscience than in public affairs, 
for nowhere else is one watched more constantly 
or subjected to more continuous criticism. The 
fear of exposure operates nowhere else more pow- 
erfully. In the bearing of great responsibilities 
he is strongest who has trained himself to measure 
up to the responsibilities imposed upon him by 
his Creator, for these being the greatest, responsi- 
bilities less weighty are more easily discharged. 

[174] 



Messages to Youth 

Christ is not only a Guide and a Friend in all 
the work that man undertakes, but His name can 
be invoked for the correction of every abuse and 
the eradication of every evil in private and public 
life. 

There is no nation in which the reviving, regen- 
erating influence of Christ's words and life is not 
sorely needed — no nation where we cannot quote 
with propriety the lines : 

I know of a land that is sunk in shame 
Of hearts that faint and tire^ 
But I know of a name, a name, a name, 
That can set the land on fire. 



THE VALUE OF AN IDEA 

W. J. BryaUy Secretary of State 

When I was in college I heard a student read 
an essay in our literary society. I do not recall 
the subject, and all I remember of the essay is 
that it contained an illustration that made an im- 
pression on my mind. He said that there was a 
place on the summit of the AUeghenies where a 
tiny stream flowed so near the ridge of the moun- 
tain that a handful of mud would turn it from 
[175] 



Right Living 

one side of the mountain range to the other and 
thus determine whether the water would flow into 
the Atlantic or to the Gulf of Mexico. He used 
it to illustrate the fact that a little circumstance 
in word or act may turn the course of a human 
life. No one in looking back over his own life can 
fail to note how things seemingly unimportant at 
the time have become an important link in the 
chain of events. Our lives turn on little pivots, 
and we never know how important an apparently 
trivial circumstance may become. 



WHILE IN SCHOOL 
J. G. Schurmany Presidenty Cornell Vmversity 

The training of the intellect, the acquisition and 
communication of knowledge, the cultivation of 
the powers of observation, imagination, and rea- 
soning, is the work for the sake of which the school 
exists. That is its primary business. Yet im- 
portant as this end is there are two or three ends 
without which it is of little account. 

Without health, knowledge is useless; without 
character, knowledge is harmful. Health is the 
one thing of all others that the student is likely 

[176] 



Messages to Youth 

to ignore. If he be of average constitution and 
vitality he will find little difficulty at first in 
carrying all the burdens that are put upon him. 
He easily thinks himself equal to any task. And 
for the sake of accomplishing what he has set 
before himself he will sacrifice regular meals, sleep, 
and recreation. Now the first lesson the student 
must learn is that he is an immortal spirit who 
does his work and lives his life in a mortal body. 
So close indeed is the connection between the phys- 
ical and the mental that many thinkers regard 
them as different sides or aspects of one process. 
I do not share this view. But I cite it to illustrate 
the fact of the thorough-going dependence of mind 
and body. Your body is a mere machine. And 
like any other machine it needs rest, change, and 
constant readjustment. For every expenditure of 
energy there must be a corresponding new supply. 
Now Nature has her own method for the recuper- 
ation of the human body. If you follow it you 
may have health; if you neglect it you will cer- 
tainly break it down. What, then, are the funda- 
mental laws of hygiene? 

First, take your meals regularly, and eat 
slowly, with the dignity of a human being, not 
gulping down your food like one of the lower ani- 
mals. Secondly, do n't fail to take daily exercise 
for an hour or two in the open air. Many stu- 
[177] 



Right Living 

dents will feel that they cannot spare the time. 
I will not call the earnest fellows fools, but I will 
say they are extremely foolish. For the student's 
life is an artificial one. He shuts himself indoors ; 
he stoops over a table; he breathes air which is 
not long fresh and soon becomes foul; he cramps 
all his limbs by constrained positions ; he exhausts 
his brain, and consequently the whole nervous sys- 
tem, by protracted study. Now a physical organ- 
ization treated in that way will not last, or at 
any rate, will not maintain its efficiency, if it be 
not daily restored for a time to its natural con- 
ditions — to fresh air, to free movements, to re- 
lease from mental occupations, to converse with 
nature, and to that healthful condition into which 
the body is soothed by the unrestricted intercourse 
of the spirit with congenial spirits. Hence I say, 
go out for exercise a couple of hours every day. 
It may be ball-playing, tennis, bicycling, walking, 
or what not. Do n't go alone, however, for in 
solitude the mind still carries on its accustomed 
operations. Thirdly, take as much sleep as your 
system needs, which will generally be about eight 
hours. Physiology confirms Shakespeare's de- 
scription of sleep as 

— Sore labor's bath. 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course. 
Chief nourisher in life's feast. 
[178] 



Messages to Youth 

Nature's rythmic alternation of motion and rest 
turns up in us in the form of waking and sleeping. 
The student especially needs his sleep. At night 
the bodily machine is exhausted by the cerebral 
strain of the day. It is said that Gladstone was 
able to do so much because he slept so much; and 
I believe it. 

The consideration of health leads up to virtue. 
There is in this world the closest connection be- 
tween what is expedient and what is right. The 
student is at college to acquire intellectual culture. 
But he must, I have said, look out for his health. 
Health is better than knowledge. But character 
is the highest of all. And character each of us 
must make for himself. Your body is a machine ; 
your will is in the image of God. Your will is 
creative. Character is the creation of free will 
in and through this bodily organization. The 
virtues of temperance and chastity would have 
no existence if we had not bodies. The free will, 
guided by reason, conscience, and religious in- 
struction, realizes these virtues in keeping the 
body under. Nor is this all. The student must 
acquire all the virtues. He must be just and kind 
and brave and true and generous. He must not 
follow blindly the society of which he has become 
a member. And in defying the public opinion of 
a school, where he thinks it wrong, he will have 
[179] 



Right Living 

scope for the exercise of the highest courage. 
Stand on your own feet. Be a man. Do what is 
right, whatever others do. Shun irreverence — 
the besetting sin of young Americans. Do n't make 
light of serious subjects; you are a man, not an 
ape, and reverence is the backbone of character. 
There can be no strength of moral fiber without 
it. It is natural for youth to look up and bow 
down before what is higher than itself. Respect 
then the law, reverence virtue, fear God. Indeed, 
the secret of character is, in a single word, this : 
*^ Fear God and keep his commandments." 

First, when you study, apply yourself with all 
your might. The power of consecrating your at- 
tention exclusively and intensely on the subject in 
hand is the best disciplinary result of education. 
It is a power that can be acquired by strenuous 
and continuous effort; and it must be acquired if 
studying is to tell. Do n't dawdle over your books. 
If you can't work go out for a walk. Then take 
up something that interests you; and interest will 
automatically enlist attention, which by degrees 
will come more and more under your direct control. 
One hour of absorbed study — with no wandering 
thought — is worth a day of make believe work. 
And in after life this power of concentrating your 
mind upon specific tasks is what will enable you 
to make a career. 

[180] 



Messages to Youth 

Secondly, students may educate one another. 
It has long been known that college is the place 
in all the world for forming friendships. For the 
same reason students may have intellectual com- 
munion with one another which is highly stimulat- 
ing and educative. Young men are frank, ingeni- 
ous, open, eager to learn, quick to detect sham, 
and they yearn to discover and to embrace the 
truth. In all this they can be of incalculable aid 
to one another. And such joint explorations, such 
communion of kindred spirits, are an imperishable 
delight. Let no student, then, live to himself or 
isolate himself from his fellows. Half the educa- 
tion of a college consists in that which students 
give to one another. 

Thirdly, the student will have growing-pains. 
The mind will enlarge. Old horizons will move 
away. The truth as he saw it yesterday will not 
be the truth as he sees it tomorrow. Knowledge, 
which increases in the race, grown also, like a liv- 
ing organism, in the mind of the individual. And 
in this process of development many students are 
likely — and more than likely in proportion as 
they are earnest and thorough going — to lose 
their bearings, to see the ancient moorings slipped, 
and perhaps to find themselves on a shoreless sea 
without a place to anchor or star to steer by. 
How many a serious, thoughtful student has had 

[181] 



Right Living 

this experience! Now to such students I would 
say, first of all, that others have been there too. 
There is solace in companionship. And, in the 
next place, I would say, hold fast to your intel- 
lectual integrity ; do n't say a thing is so unless 
you believe it. But, lastly, I w^ould say, if you 
are persistent, as well as honest, you will work 
through your doubts and attain firm standing 
ground, from which you can take a larger survey 
of truth — the old as well as the new — and dis- 
cern that the very meaning of education is a higher 
adjustment of all truths, and that God is still in 
His heavens and in His world, though it may be 
that some of the beliefs with which tradition has 
started us all must be recast — if not dissolved — ■ 
in the light of the physical science, historical 
scholarship, and philosophical reflection of this 
Christian century. 

Lastly, however great or rapid your mental 
growth, do n't think you have got beyond the 
churches or other religious organizations. These 
exist, not for intellectual training, but for the 
promotion of righteousness of life and spiritual 
communion with the Unseen Father whose heart 
has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. That 
central fact remains in spite of all your growth 
in knowledge. And so I say do n't fail to go to 
church at least once on Sunday. Furthermore, I 

[182] 



Messages to Youth 

commend the Christian associations, which will aid 
you in Bible study, give you religious work to 
do, and afford you companionship with comrades 
who stand for what is honest, and true, and of 
good report. 

And so, with this word of encouragement and 
advice to our earnest student, who is to grow in 
knowledge, and I trust also in virtue and piety, 
I bid him God-speed. 



THE NEW RELATIONS OF THE 
STUDENT 

Edwin H. Hughes^ Bishop^ Methodist Episcopal 
Church 

It is expected that the president shall open 
the college year by saying some words of sugges- 
tion and counsel to his students, both new and old. 

Being matriculated, you must face the fact of 
your new relations. Already, it must be, you have 
been aware of their newness. Some of you have 
met this with unalloyed pleasure; others with un- 
alloyed pain. It is much to be doubted whether 
you will ever again in life's experience meet so 
complete and meaningful a change as this which 
[183] 



Right Living 

brings you here. It has in it all the character of 
a crisis. Consider where you were a week ago 
today and then consider where you are now, and 
try to measure the distance and the significance 
of the change. 

Your relations to your home are very different 
from those you have sustained hitherto. Up to 
this time your parents have been with you much 
of the time. Morning and evening, and at noon 
too, many of you have reported yourselves to 
your fathers and mothers. They have known 
about your calls and your callers. In a sense they 
have governed you by their presence. Within the 
week all this has changed. With anxieties that 
you will not appreciate for years to come, your 
parents have sent or brought you hither. Some 
of you, who have been in close relations with your 
fathers and mothers, felt the lump in your throats 
as you left home or as they left this town. Now 
they must govern you, as best as they can, in their 
absence. Am I not right in saying that your rela- 
tion to them is wholly new? And may I not, as 
one who is himself a son and a father — aye, as 
one who would gladly be as a brother and father 
to all of you — ask this question : What are you 
going to do with your parents while you are in 
college? More than ever before they are in your 
hands — how are you going to treat them? 

[184] 



Messages to Youth 

I have sometimes thought that one of the best 
tests of this relation is the use of money. If I 
should see your faithfully kept expense account 
this year, I would get a fair revelation as to 
whether you were true or traitorous to your par- 
ents. Up to the time of your coming here money 
has been given you in small amounts — ten cents, 
twenty-five cents, fifty cents, occasionally a dollar. 
Some of you have within three days had far more 
money at your disposal than you ever had before 
in all your lives. In taking a relation to that 
money you are taking a relation to your parents. 
I know a young man who last year betrayed his 
father every week by his use of funds. A score 
of times his money, if given a tongue, could have 
called him an ingrate and a traitor. Let me ask 
you that you often try this simple test: "This 
expenditure is an expression of me and of my 
relation to my parents." Let me beseech you that 
you make your new relation to your father and 
mother a noble one. Back of you is the period of 
dependence. Ahead of you is the period of inde- 
pendence. Now you are in the period of semi- 
dependence or semi-independence, as you may elect 
to call it. More certainly than ever you are on 
your honor. You can, for a time at least, deceive 
your parents ; they are so many miles away. I 
Venture the statement that at no one point will 
[185] 



Right Living 

you so make or unmake character. Hence, I sug- 
gest as one prayer for this chapel service : " O 
God, keep me true in this school to my parents." 
I would like, also, to emphasize the fact that 
you have now come into new relations to your 
teachers. In due season you will become well ac- 
quainted, friendly, even intimate with some of 
your teachers. On the other hand, there may be 
an aloofness, a real failure to get into sympa- 
thetic contact with these who are, for perhaps 
four years, to be vast factors in your development. 
Now I assert that your attitude toward them is 
unspeakably important. You may say : " These 
men are my teachers ; they are working for me ; 
I will think of them cordially and in due time, 
affectionately.'' That is the wholesome attitude. 
Every man ought to be allowed to take this atti- 
tude without risk of the accusation that he is a 
faculty cultivator. There is another attitude all 
too common: You may get the impression from 
what you will hear some foolish student say that 
you should proceed upon the idea that faculty and 
students are in opposing camps. It is true that 
this thought does not go deeply with the average 
person; but It always has a place in college life. 
You should not permit yourself to believe that 
the faculty or any member of it has " it in for 
you,'^ as the phrase goes. You are apt to get 

[186] 



Messages to Youth 

the feeling if you do not do your work and if the 
president and professors interview you somewhat 
decidedly. It is ever an absurd feeling. Men who 
" have it in for you " will not try to get you to 
do your tasks well, or to follow a right course. 
In your college life you will have no better friends. 
Begin with that thought and hold to it. So will 
your relations with your teachers grow ever richer 
and finer, and coming years will see them holding 
secure place in your admiration, and affection. 

Nor would this word be complete if something 
were not said about your relations with your fel- 
low students. Choose your associates wisely and 
with a long purpose. Do not allow any fraternity 
or clique or faction or class to limit you here. 
Get near to all kinds of students. Directly you 
are going out into the world where you will per- 
force deal with all kinds of men. Secure a prep- 
aration. The study of human nature is not listed 
in our curriculum, but it is in the course anyhow, 
and you should elect it. Do this not in shrewdness, 
not in selfishness, and assuredly not in malice ; but 
do it kindly and generously because you want to 
win from life an honorable success and because 
you want to know men so that you may help them. 
No one can compute the good you may get and 
may give if in your life here you take a genial 
and honest relation to your fellow students. 
[187] 



Right Living 

You should be warned, also, as to the attitude 
you will take to your studies. The change in this 
relation is very pronounced. Far more than for- 
merly you are now on your own responsibility. 
In a way you have no overseer. In the past your 
parents have said to you many times : " You 
would better go to your books.'* That ceases now. 
The classes to which you went were small, and 
every day or so the test of your work would come. 
This, too, will be much changed. A week or more 
may pass without your giving any public expres- 
sion of your knowledge. Unless you are careful, 
you will be deceived. I say to you, therefore, do 
your work conscientiously and well from the very 
start. If no one says to you in the evening: 
^' Study," study anyhow. If there seems no prob- 
ability of your reciting at a certain recitation, get 
ready anyhow. A man is never wise who plays 
tricks upon himself. Make up your mind now that 
all work in recitation and examination shall be 
honest — through and through honest. Do not 
make yourself a liar and a thief and a hypocrite 
by one mean action. You cannot afford to be all 
that even for an hour. It will be a fine memory 
for you the rest of your life if you can say always : 
*' Whatever else my college work was or was not, 
it was clean and fair and square." Remember that 
the first purpose of your coming here is study. 

[188] 



Messages to Youth 

Other things accompany that ; but you are primar- 
ily a student. You will grow in strength if you 
will say firmly : " I will be a student first — and 
some other things only afterwards." 

All that I have said implies that you now take 
a new relation to yourself. Indeed, when you 
take relations to your parents, professors, fellow 
students and work, you necessarily take a new 
relation to yourself also. Keep your standards 
high. Be no prig. Do not leap into the seat 
of the moral critic. But hold to your convictions 
and live by them. You will see your fellow stu- 
dents doing things that you have not thought 
right. 

Do not yield to the contagion of evil example. 
Be smiling about it, and hold stedfast to your 
integrity. 

If you are a Christian, as I trust you are, 
stand by the Master. Aid the Christian work. 
Out of your college experiences get character — 
more character and better. In this first chapel 
service breathe a prayer to God for yourself that 
He may keep you true and steady ; that you may 
be wise enough to take His hand and follow His 
leading ; that down this unknown way — which 
seems so bright and rosy now — you may walk 
in company with Him. I adjure you by all that 
is sacred, that you may make no wreck of these 
[189] 



Bight Living 

opportunities. And with this charge I send you 
forth to your work ! God bless every one of you ! 



PREPARATION FOR AN EFFECTIVE 
LIFE 

Charles W. Eliot, Ex-President^ Harvard 
University 

The subject chosen is " Preparation for an 
Effective Life." That is the life I am sure you 
all want to live — an effective life. 

Such a life must be based in the first place on 
a good, sound, serviceable body. None of us can 
have an effective life without a strong, healthy, 
cheerful servant in the body. It should be the 
servant, not the master. But that servant is nec- 
essary to an effective life. Some invalids and fee- 
ble persons have proved to be men of genius and, 
therefore, serviceable to the world. There are 
not a few examples of such triumph of mental 
and moral quality over the feebleness of the earthly 
body. But for effectiveness in the future career 
of you young men, a sound body is in the highest 
degree desirable, and, as a rule, it is essential. 

Now, it is easy to misunderstand what we mean 
by a sound body. It is easy to exaggerate the 
muscular force, for instance, which is desirable 

[190] 



Messages to Youth 

for a good serviceable body. It is not that we 
need a big frame or heavy muscles. The essential 
thing is a sound nervous system, with which goes 
a fairly developed muscular system, and a strong 
digestive system. 

I have been in the habit of saying — and I be- 
lieve it to be absolutely true — that a person who 
does not enjoy his food is not likely to have a 
very serviceable life. The enjoyment of all the 
natural physical functions is highly desirable 
throughout life; and we need the kind of body 
which permits that steady enjoyment of all the 
natural animal functions of a human being. The 
effectiveness tells most in the nervous system. 
Work does not hurt anybody. It is worry, 
anxiety, nervousness in work which tells against 
the bodily comfort, and the body serviceableness. 
Work is almost always healthy and developing; 
worry, anxiety, and nervousness never are. Aim, 
therefore, at keeping your body nervously sound, 
because the nerves are the directing parts of the 
body. It is pretty hard for a healthy boy to 
overwork his muscles ; but even a healthy boy can 
readily overwork his nerves. 

Sleeplessness is an early symptom of nervous 
exhaustion, and always needs attention at once, 
whether it appears in a pupil, or a teacher, in a 
bookworm, or athlete. 

[191] 



Right Living 

Now you boys are probably not affected with 
sleeplessness. Poetry is full of praises of sleep — 
" Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care," 
" He giveth his beloved sleep," Now sleep is the 
great nerve repairer. 

So when you think of the bodily soundness which 
is necessary to success in life, to effectiveness in 
your adult life, think of the wiry, tough, active, 
enduring body which resists fatigue, and endures 
anxiety without a quiver, and faces danger in the 
same way — steadily, and calmly, though alertly. 
That is the sort of body you need in order to have 
an effective life for the years to come. 

Now, let us turn to the intellectual side. What 
sort of mind is the serviceable mind, in all the pro- 
fessions and in all the business occupations of the 
world? It is the mind capable of concentration, 
of an intense application to the task in hand. I 
dare say there are some boys here who have been 
told, " You do n't know how to study ; you do n't 
take hold of a lesson with any vigorous grip ; you 
have n't learned how to think hard." 

Now, that pov/er of application, the power of 
concentrating all your forces of memory and rea- 
soning on the task of the moment, is the principal 
thing you ought to get while in this school. Get 
that, and you have gone far to secure an effective 
life. 

[ 192] 



Messages to Youth 

There are some intellectual qualities which you 
need to acquire and develop here at this time of 
your life, which will have much to do with the play 
of your minds in future years. One is a strong 
taste for reading, for reading of a serious sort, as 
well as a light sort. Acquire a liking for history 
and biography, and for historical romance, a lik- 
ing, in short, for those interesting narratives of 
the world's experience, and of the intellectual de- 
velopment of great men and women, which inform 
the opening mind as to what men and women have 
thought, and done, and tried to do in the world. 

The taste for reading, if genuine and strong, is 
a sufficient resource for the most prolonged mental 
enjoyment. 

The time would fail me to describe all the intel- 
lectual achievements to be made in youth as the 
pledges of mature effectiveness. But there is one 
kind of intellectual practice which is obviously of 
high importance. The practice of competition 
with your mates in things intellectual. That is 
the only way in which an individual can arrive at 
a knowledge of his own powers. That is the only 
way in which a nation can arrive at the knowledge 
of its own powers and capacities — through com- 
petition. 

There is another mental faculty that you ought 
to win something of here, because there is a good 

[193] 



Might Living 

degree of freedom in this school — the faculty of 
independent thinking, of thinking for yourselves. 
Read a book, and reflect upon the impression that 
it has made on you ; and think about it for your- 
self. Think independently, so far as you can; in 
youth not so much as in adult age, but begin in 
youth the process of independent thought. 

The next part of education for an effective life, 
which I want to speak about, is manners. It would 
be difficult to exaggerate the importance of man- 
ners with reference to an effective career in the 
world. It is very ineffective to stand in a slouch- 
ing way while speaking, or to limp first on one 
leg and then on the other, or to give any sign of 
bodily feebleness and limpness. You know the sol- 
dier's position of attention and respect is with 
heels together and body erect. That position is 
always an element in the best manners, and there 
is hardly a more effective element. The mode of 
speaking is important. Gentleness, clearness, and 
courtesy in speech are valuable in every profession 
and in every business. Cheerfulness of manner is 
everything in some businesses. And then a real 
sincerity ought to be expressed in manners, a dif- 
ficult, and yet a very precious thing. Frankness 
is a good part of it. 

When you shake hands with a man or woman, 
look in the eyes, straight in the eyes, with no blink- 

[ 194] 



Messages to Youth 

ing of the encounter. The best manners express 
the character of the person, and express it so clear- 
ly that the stranger has no doubt of the character. 
A glance reveals the character of such -a man or 
such a woman ; even a short contact, without inti- 
mate intercourse, satisfies the stranger that he is 
speaking to a person of fine or noble character. So 
potent are the best manners. 

Let me recommend all of you to read Ralph 
Waldo Emerson's essay on " Manners." I think 
it is the best thing he ever wrote. 

And now there is still another issue of a sound 
education which is too much neglected in both our 
schools and colleges. Every boy here ought to 
bring away from this school some skill, or intel- 
lectual faculty, which will enable him to give pleas- 
ure to other people. Now, the real way to win 
social success in any walk of life, high or low, 
among the poor or the well-to-do, the educated 
or the u.neducated — the real way to get social 
success in the tenement house, or on the farm, or 
in the palace, is to possess some power of giving 
pleasure to others. Can you read aloud, for in- 
stance? I have met many a time in my life men 
and women who by reading aloud with expression 
and charm gave, all through their lives, keen pleas- 
ure to great numbers of men, women and children. 
Can you play a musical instrument? Can you 

[195] 



Right Living 

sing — if only one song? It has been one of the 
defects in our education, at school and college, 
that we have not paid attention enough to this ele- 
ment in an effective education — the acquiring of 
some capacity to give other people pleasure, a 
capacity which once acquired will last through life. 

May I ask your attention to the different values 
of sports and accomplishments, according as they 
are temporary or lasting? There are many of the 
athletic sports which really last through life, or 
till advanced age. I have a friend in Boston, now 
seventy-five years of age, who still plays tennis 
with great activity. Any out-door sport which 
does not require a team, so to speak, is valuable 
through life. Those which require a combination 
of many players, of course, cannot be kept up 
through life; because the individual cannot get 
himself into a team in later years. Hence, the 
relative undesirableness of such sports as foot- 
ball and baseball ; because they are merely tempo- 
rary. They cannot be carried on through mature 
life to age. Give preference every time to those 
bodily accomplishments, and those aesthetic and in- 
tellectual delights which last and can be practiced 
all through life. That is quite as true of intellec- 
tual accomplishments as it is of bodily. 

Now I come to the last essential element of edu- 
cation for effectiveness. It is the acquisition of 

[196] 



Messages to Youth 

sound moral habits. There is no acquisition which 
can more truly be said to be essential to an effective 
life than this acquisition of sound moral habits. 
In your position here you have every opportunity 
to acquire a firmness of moral purpose which can- 
not be broken or impaired. Most young men whose 
training for life is long, acquire this moral firm- 
ness before they come to college. They acquire it, 
some in their homes, some in their schools, and 
some in their churches ; but unless a youth has ac- 
quired it by the time he is eighteen years of age, 
he is in a position of danger. He is going out 
into a broader world where temptations are on 
every side. He is going to a city to live; he is 
going to a city college, where all the vice and the 
evils of the world can be found if sought. He 
is going to a college in the country, where it used 
to be supposed that life was more innocent, or 
where temptations were less conspicuous. If that 
were ever true, it is no longer true. In the 
country you may easily find if you search 
for them, all the evils of the city. There is no 
slum worse than a rural slum. There is no popu- 
lation more degenerate than a country degenerate 
population. 

Now, what is to be done, when from such shelter 
as this you go out into the world, where tempta- 
tions assail you? The first rule is — never experi- 

[197] 



Right Living 

ment with any vice. In my own youth I often 
heard young men express an adventurous desire 
to try a vice, to try a vicious indulgence. That is 
always intensely dangerous. Never try any vi- 
cious practice; never do harm to a comrade by 
example or advice; and never have any share in 
doing harm to a woman. 

It is almost impossible to separate morality 
from religion. You know our public schools have 
been forced by the very nature of our population, 
mixed as regards both race and religion, to abolish 
religious services within the schools. This is the 
situation, an almost incomprehensible and wholly 
deplorable situation; for the schools are really 
the chief hope of the country, as regards the pres- 
ervation of free institutions, and the uplifting of 
our extraordinary heterogeneous population. But 
must we not believe that some way is to be found 
out of this dangerous condition? Must we not 
believe that a way will be found to unite again the 
teachings of essential morality with the teaching of 
a universal religion? 

I was once much interested by Brigadier-Gen- 
eral Casey, the man whom Congress entrusted with 
the building of the Congressional Library for the 
sum of seven million dollars within a specified num- 
ber of years, and who accomplished this feat. 
When the job was almost finished, he needed in- 

[198] 



Messages to Youth 

scriptions to stand over some allegorical statues 
which adorned the upper part of the great read- 
ing-room. One of these statues represented Relig- 
ion. He had tried to get satisfactory inscriptions 
from various persons, and had failed; and almost 
at the last moment he asked me if I were willing 
to provide them. I undertook the work, and short- 
ly sent to General Casey eight inscriptions to 
stand above those eight statues. One morning 
General Casey came to the building from his house, 
called his second in command, Mr. Bernard Greene, 
who is now Superintendent of the Congressional 
Library, and said, " President Eliot has sent me 
these inscriptions for the statues in the reading- 
room. I like them all except the inscription over 
the statue of Religion. That inscription is too 
Christian." 

Now, General Casey was himself a Christian. 
*^ Too Christian ! " I thought it singularly appro- 
priate. It was, " For we being many are one body 
in Christ, and every one members one of another.'' 
That seemed to me to be an accurate description 
of sound religion in a republic. But it was " too 
Christian," and General Casey said to Mr. Greene, 
" Won't you write a letter to President Eliot, and 
ask him to provide another inscription for the 
statue of Religion? I don't feel well today; I 
am going home." In an hour General Casey was 
[199] 



Right Living 

dead. Under those circumstances I provided an- 
other inscription — Micah's definition of religion : 
" What doth the Lord require of thee but to do 
justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
thy God,'' and that is the inscription which stands 
today in that superb room over the statue of Re- 
ligion. 

Can we not have that religion taught in all our 
schools and colleges? In a democracy the moral 
lesson which needs to be taught at every turn is 
" do justly." Let the collective force treat the 
individual justly; let the chief industrial powers 
treat all their work-people justly; let the govern- 
ment be just. But justice is stem, like nature. 
" Love mercy." Mercy to fellow men, mercy to 
animals, mercy to children. " Walk humbly with 
thy God." 

Oh, that we could teach in every school and 
college in our land daily, hourly, this vital lesson 
of communion with the Great Spirit of Justice, 
Mercy, and Love. " Walk humbly with thy God." 
That justice describes the right relation of the 
human being to the Heavenly Father; that is a 
lesson you ought to learn here. There is no the- 
ology in it; there is no creed in it; it simply de- 
clares the presence of a loving Father. It invites 
to a personal sense of His presence and His love. 
And let me assure you that there is no sounder 

[ 200 ] 



Messages to Youth 

principle of education toward an effective and 
happy life than this, " Walk humbly with thy 
God.'^ 



SOCIALISM AND ITS IDEALS 

Eugene V. Debs^ Social Reformer 

Socialism is more than a mere political tenet. 
In its deeper and more profound significance this 
beautiful philosophy touches the very fountain- 
head of man's spiritual being. In its loftiest con- 
ception socialism appeals to the highest and noblest 
ideals of the race. It bases its claims for the 
consideration of mankind upon the attributes of 
love and utter unselfishness which are enshrined in 
the heart of every true man and woman. 

As contradistinguished from Individualism, 
which means selfishness, or the consideration of 
self, at the expense of every noble attribute of the 
human heart and soul. Socialism means to lose 
one's self in the service of his fellows. 

The attainment of the ideals of Socialism under 
the environment of the present, or capitalist 
system of society, is utterly impossible and that is 
why we seek, through political and legal methods, 
to change our economic and social system. 

We desire an economic and social system based 
[201 ] 



Bight Living 

upon love and cooperation rather than one based 
upon hatred and competition, which is tantamount 
to saying that socialists prefer love to hatred, un- 
selfishness to selfishness, peace to war, plenty to 
poverty. 

Never before in the history of the race has it 
been possible to realize the ideals of Socialism. 

Without universal education, the triumph of 
science, and the wonderful inventions of the past 
century — the world would not be ready for So- 
cialism. As it is, we stand in the vestibule of a 
new civilization — upon the very threshold of the 
mightiest progress of the race. 

To abolish poverty ; to make war impossible ; to 
replace hatred with love ; to bring to every human 
being a realization of his or her true relation to 
every other human being on earth, to usher in the 
age of universal brotherhood — this and nothing 
less, is the mission of Socialism. 

Surely in the service of this cause is to be found 
that inspiration which is alone worthy to com- 
mand the noblest aspirations of those who are in 
the first bloom of their young manhood and woman- 
hood. 

Only the sacrifice of lives of countless millions 
of the workers of the world has made possible the 
education and cultivation of the minds of the youth 
of this age; how otherwise can they repay this 

[202] 



Messages to Youth 

mighty sacrifice than by the consecration of their 
lives and talents to the service of their fellows? 

How paltry appear the promised rewards of 
capitalism — with its ideals of narrow selfishness 
— pomp and power — when compared with the un- 
selfish altruism and moral grandeur of Social- 



ism 



The power of the ideal of Socialism is seizing 
upon the universal mind of mankind. The noblest 
men and women of earth are espousing it and find- 
ing consolation and inspiration in its teachings. 
It comes not to destroy religion but to make re- 
ligion a realization. It appeals to the Godlike in 
every man and woman and to the divinest longing 
in every human heart and soul. Socialism is the 
next step upward of the race and to your noblest 
consideration I commend its ideals and inspira- 
tions. 



ORGANIZED LABOR 

John Mitchell^ Labor Reformer 

As one reads the pages of history he might be 
led to believe that the world in former times was 
peopled with princes and nobles, that there Were 
no workingmen, or, if there were any, that they 
rendered no service to society which entitled them 
[203] 



Right Living 

to a place in history. And, indeed, when we con- 
sider that in many nations, prior to the birth of 
Christ, all workingmen were slaves and were sup- 
posed by their masters and the ruling class to have 
no souls, it is not to be wondered at that their ex- 
istence should be ignored. Yet there has never 
been a time in the world's history when the men of 
labor have not been required to bear the brunt 
and carry the burden in every struggle for greater 
liberty. 

The birth of Christ and the life He followed 
meant more in a material as well as in a spiritual 
way to the working people than any event in the 
world's progress. The fact that He was a work- 
ingman gave to labor a new dignity, although it 
did not free the workingman from the stigma that 
has been attached in all ages to servile labor. From 
that time until the present the working people of 
every generation have been struggling for new 
liberties and for a broader and better concept of 
the laws made for their government. Even in our 
own country — in which it is declared that all men 
are created equal and endowed by their Creator 
with the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness — we still find the ancient struggle, un- 
der a new name, going on unremittingly. And in 
all probability the struggle of the workingmen 
will continue until the last vestige of poverty, in- 

[ 204 ] 



Messages to Youth 

justice, and wrong has been banished from the face 
of the earth. 

While the Declaration of Independence estab- 
lished civil and political liberty, it did not, as you 
all know, establish industrial liberty. For nearly 
one hundred years following the Declaration of 
Independence, chattel slavery was a recognized 
and legal institution in our civilization; and real 
industrial liberty was not even established with the 
abolition of chattel slavery, because liberty means 
more than the right to choose the field of 
one's employment. He is not a free man 
whose family must buy food today with the 
money that is earned tomorrow; he is not really 
free v/ho is forced to work unduly long hours and 
for wages so low that he cannot provide the neces- 
sities of life for himself and his family — who 
must live in a crowded tenement and see his chil- 
dren go to work in the mills, the mines, and the 
factories before their bodies are developed and 
their minds trained. To have freedom a man 
must be free from the harrowing fear of hunger 
and want; he must be in such a position that by 
the exercise of reasonable frugality he can provide 
his family with all the necessities and the reason- 
able comforts of life; he must be able to educate 
his children and to provide against sickness, acci- 
dent and old age. 

[205] 



Bight Living 

It is perfectly safe to say that In no age of the 
world's history has the spirit of materialism and 
commercialism been so pronounced as in our own. 
In our mad rush for wealth and power, for ease 
and idleness, for luxury and pleasure, we are dis- 
regarding the higher sentiments of humanity. We 
have reached the point where the term " success " 
is taken largely to signify the accumulation of 
wealth. I do not mean to suggest that the spirit 
of altruism is dead; quite the contrary. Fortu- 
nately for us there is a strong counter movement 
which is moulding and crystallizing the better sen- 
timents of the people and which is free from all 
that is sordid, selfish and vain. This movement for 
broader and better lives, for a happier and more 
intelligent people recruits its ranks and secures 
its strength from all classes. But there is one 
great association of men, misunderstood and often 
maligned, that is doing as much, perhaps, in the 
interest of real democracy as it is possible for an 
association of men to do. I speak particularly 
of the organized labor movement, that movement 
that Gladstone characterized as the bulwark of 
modern democracy, the movement that voices 
the hopes, expresses the thoughts, and fights the 
battles of millions of men, women and children, 
whom modern industrialism has placed at a dis- 
advantage in the race of life for the goal of suc- 

[206] 



Messages to Youth 

cess. This army of working men and women is 
banded together not to destroy, not to tear down, 
not to revolutionize society as it is established 
today. Its philosophy is to construct, to build, to 
perfect society, to make the world better, to make 
its people happier, to secure justice for the men 
of our time, and to insure to the coming genera- 
tions a better and broader existence than is possi- 
ble today. 

My purpose in writing the foregoing is to sug- 
gest to your minds the thought, as you enter life's 
race, that reaching the goal ahead of your fellow 
does not necessarily constitute the greatest meas- 
ure of success. Indeed, he who stops on the way 
to help a weaker brother, or to lift up one who has 
stumbled and fallen, may have achieved success 
in a nobler degree than he who, disregarding the 
interest and welfare of his fellows, pushes on to 
the attainment of purely selfish ends. 



THE CHRISTIAN'S DAILY LIFE 

Rev. J. Wilbur Chapman^ Evcmgelist 

It is a great pleasure to have my share with oth- 
ers in sending you a message. I look back upon 
my own student days and remember so well the in- 

[ 207] 



BigJit Living 

fluence that was brought to bear upon my life by 
men who seemed to be interested in me. When I 
was but a lad and obliged to toil very diligently 
to earn my living, I felt that I had a call to preach, 
and a business man spoke a word of cheer to me, 
which largely determined my entering the ministry. 
When I was almost at the end of my college 
course, D. L. Moody came into my life. I was 
not quite sure that I was a Christian, and the great 
evangelist led me out into a clear conception of 
what it meant to be a Christian, and from that day 
until this I have never doubted my salvation. It 
is because I remember these things so well that I 
covet the privilege of sending this message. 

There is only one great problem in life, and 
that is our individual relationship to God. It is 
not so much a question as to what we do in this 
world, but rather, are we living to please Him.'^ 
God has a plan for every life, and it is no more 
disastrous for one's arm to be out of its socket 
or for a planet to swing out of its orbit, than for 
a life to be out of harmony with God's will. When 
we fit into His plan we are absolutely sure of the 
truest and best success in life. 

It is a great thing to be a preacher of the gospel, 
but it is quite as great to be a Christian lawyer, 
physician, merchant, or farmer, if we feel that God 
has called us to such positions. There is only one 

[208] 



Messages to Youth 

way to know God, and that is through Jesus 
Christ. He said, " He that hath seen Me hath 
seen the Father." 

Having settled the question of relationship with 
God, it is necessary that we should observe certain 
rules as regard our daily living. May I suggest 
the following: 

1. Begin every day with God. Five minutes 
spent alone with Him before the day's work begins 
will sweeten all our experiences and strengthen 
us for every conflict. 

2. Start the day with a verse of scripture com- 
mitted to memory. " Thy word have I hid in my 
heart that I might not sin against Thee," wrote 
the Psalmist. The Bible has the same power to 
help in all generations. 

3. Seek to be like Christ, kindly, considerate, 
consistent, genuinely good, helpful in all ways to 
all kinds of people. 

4. Have the highest ideals in life and realize 
that you may reach them with the help God will 
give you. 

5. Remember that it is every man's duty not 
only to be right with God but to be right with his 
fellow men. It is a sign of greatness to be able 
to ask forgiveness of another if you have done him 
an injury. It is a sure sign of weakness to be 
stubborn and unforgiving. 

[209] 



Right Living 

6. Try to make each day brighter and better 
for someone else. When you put sunshine into 
another life you bring it into your own. 

7. Be true to your school duties and to the 
teachers who are over you. 

Observing these rules I am sure that you will 
come to strong, true manhood, and life will be 
worth living. 



CIVIC RELIGION 

Stephen S. Wise^ Rabbi, Free Synagogue, New 

York 

The problem of the nation is not that of fifty 
years ago. At that time, the national problem 
was the problem of state rights. Today the prob- 
lem of the nation is the problem of civic duty, a 
problem which has not grown out of state rights, 
but, it must admitted, out of civic wrongs. 

The solution of the civic problem of the nation 
IS to be found in a re-birth of what Phillips Brooks 
has called " spiritual patriotism," or a civic re- 
ligion. Nothing less than civic religion will ena- 
ble the residents of American cities adequately to 
meet the growing problem of civic life. The hope 

[ 210] 



Messages to Youth 

of a civic revival lies in the dawn of a religion 
of patriotism. 

We are to serve the state not only with our 
bodies as soldiers or policemen, not even with 
our heads alone as voters, but, as Thoreau has put 
it, with our consciences as citizens. Ours ought 
to be a religion of patriotism, for America is not 
a land alone, nor a country, nor a people, but a 
hope, a vision, an ideal. What nobler religion can 
there be than the pure love and unselfish service of 
the noblest, freest commonwealth the world has 
ever known? 

Ours it is to stand for a godly, but not a 
churchly state, a state before the altars of which 
patriotism shall be as a religion and every citizen 
as a priest. The churches in America are to lead 
in striving after better things in our civic life, 
things that are real and not nominal, aiming not 
so much to put the name of God into the Constitu- 
tion as to put the things of God into the life of the 
people. 

The real enemy of the American democracy does 
not live in Japan, nor in China, nor in Russia, 
nor in Germany, nor in France. The most deadly 
enemy of the Republic, which must be met and 
overcome is the city grafter, the municipal cor- 
ruptionist. If we must have a big navy and a 
bigger army, these ought to be employed not 

[211] 



Right Living 

against imaginary foes across the sea, but against 
these real enemies of the Republic who are un- 
doing the work of the fathers and blighting the 
hopes of democracy by demoralizing and degrad- 
ing the civic life of the nation. The nation is in 
need today not of external defense, but of internal 
defense, not of the " big stick " for foes without 
its borders, but of a larger conscience in the citi- 
zenship within its walls. Graft and sloth and self 
seeking are more dangerous to the nation than 
foreign foes can ever be. The real yellow peril 
of gold-mad graft is far more dangerous than the 
fictitious yellow peril of the far East. One can 
respect a brave and open foe that is near by or 
far off, but one can only have contempt for the 
mean and cowardly foe of the nation within the 
ranks of its own citizenship. The nation must 
learn to honor its civic heroes, its civic leaders of 
character and worth, but it must also learn to 
despise and smite its civic criminals, its civic 
bandits. 

The man to be dreaded in a democracy is not 
the muck-raker, but the muck-maker. The muck- 
raker may be laughed out of court, but the muck- 
maker ought to be haled into court. If a train 
be rushing downhill because control of the brakes 
has been lost the man who seizes hold of them and 
succeeds in bringing the cars to a halt, is likely to 

[ 212] 



Messages to Youth 

give the passengers a severe jolt, but he has saved 
their lives. 

Political and financial corruption are like tuber- 
culosis, in need of the fresh air and sunlight treat- 
ment. The muck-raker is he who honestly and 
bravely tries to undo, in part, at least, the disas- 
trous consequences wrought by the treasonable 
deeds of the civic muck-maker. The real muck- 
raker is not he who speaks the truth touching evil 
conditions but he whose conduct so pollutes a city's 
life as to make plain-speaking inevitable. 

If civic patriotism is to become a civic religion, 
the pitfalls for religion must be avoided. For one 
thing, civic religion must avoid the danger of 
scapegoatism. Let us not make a scapegoat of 
some single political force or organization, and 
thus try to explain away civic inefficiency and civic 
unrighteousness. Such an organization as Tam- 
many Hall is supported not only by the active 
suffrage at all times of a very large majority of 
New York's citizenship, but above all, is made 
possible by the indifference and lethargy of multi- 
tudes who do not care; and, moreover, by the in- 
efficiency and incompetence of many of those who 
set forth to lead the forces of reform. The power 
of Tammany Halls everywhere is made possible by 
the corrupt leadership of a few and the inert ac- 
quiescence of the many. 

[213] 



Right Living 

Civic reform must be a matter of continuous 
and ceaseless striving. Civic righteousness is not 
to be achieved by spasm covering a fortnight be- 
fore election, or by paroxysms of civic wrath, 
which subside immediately after election day. One 
is tempted to give assent to the doggerel of an 
observer of political conditions in our land : 

For civic reform 
Men are often lukewarm 
But those who are not. 
Are always red-hot. 

Four weeks of ante-election excitement must not 
be depended upon to dislodge a corrupt machine 
after years of entrenched power. The civic ref- 
ormation will not be attained if municipalities 
" grow tired '' after a few years of earnest effort 
as San Francisco appears to have grown tired. 

The leaders of the hope of civic reformation, 
like the churches, spend too much time and strength 
in fighting each other instead of waging united 
warfare upon the common enemy. There must be 
no division among the forces that make for better 
things. Let it not be forever true touching mu- 
nicipal campaigns that " The wolves hunt in packs 
while the watch-dogs snap and snarl at each other." 
The Tammany Hall of American cities is always 
united at election seasons; its foes are usually 
divided. 

[214] 



Messages to Youth 

The leadership of the civic religion that is to 
be must be unselfish and consecrated. Politics does 
not ruin the character. It is the want of character 
that ruins politics. As Theodore Parker said of 
Charles Sumner, " A man may be in politics and 
still be in morals.'' Governor Hughes was the 
answer of yesterday to the question of the cynic, 
Who can be in politics and keep his hands clean? 
Governor Folk of Missouri was the answer of the 
day before, and Governor Wilson of New Jersey, 
now President Wilson, is the answer of today. 

The civic consecration of which we as yet but 
dream will not be possible until men put aside the 
spirit of partisanship, the obstructive prejudices, 
and the immoral regard for private interests when 
these conflict with the common interest. 

Blind partisanship is one of the most potent foes 
of honest government. Even as the whole is great- 
er than the part, so ought country ever be set 
above party, when national and partisan interests 
clash. The regular party candidate is always 
relied upon to draw the full party vote, though he 
be of the most irregular life, and the straight party 
tickets are not infrequently made up of crooked 
candidates. Municipal and national politics 
should be divorced; not occasionally separated, 
but permanently and irrevocably divorced. Mu- 
nicipal non-partisanship means that in the choice 
[215] 



Right Living 

of civic officials no regard shall be paid to a man's 
position with respect to national political prob- 
lems, but that there shall be a greater concern 
touching the possession of a high character by a 
candidate for public office, whatever it may be. 
In municipal elections, whatever principles may 
be the stake, the principal issue is the man, his 
worth, his character, his ideals, his record. 

Civic religion is impossible without the casting 
out of those racial and religious and sectional 
prejudices, which are the bans of good govern- 
ment and the darling hope of the corruptionists 
in politics. Shame upon the men who are forever 
appealing to the wretched little loyalties, the so- 
called race loyalties, the quasi-religious loyalty, 
and the pseudo-sectional loyalty, all the littler and 
meaner loyalties, which conflict with the highest 
loyalty of the citizen of civic welfare! We must 
have an end to the hyphenated vote in American 
politics. There ought to be no Irish-American 
vote and no Italian-American vote and no Afro- 
American vote. I have the right to say that there 
is no Jewish- American vote. 

A civic religion that shall be worth while cannot 
come to pass until men place the public welfare 
above private interest. The rich and the well-to- 
do, who seek privileges and protection and im- 
munities, are the mainstay of the political bosses. 
[ 216] 



Messages to Youth 

It is just as base to be purchased by the bribe of 
a nomination or a franchise as to be bought or sold 
by a bribe of money. The public service corpora- 
tions in our municipalities will be dealt with fairly 
as long as they are ready to deal squarely with the 
people. 

No machinery will do the work of civic reform 
or supply the want of civic religion. Cities can 
be cleaned and kept clean by men and women. 
Before and beyond nomination and all election re- 
forms, important though these in truth are, is 
needed the ceaseless and unwearying consecration 
to the civic zeal of the citizen and patriot. The 
American must vote, not as a partisan, but as an 
American, not with his lead pencil, but with an 
enlightened conscience. 



SPIRITUAL PROGRESS 

William Allen White, Editor and Author 

But the doubter will ask. How does progress 
grow? How is good will cultivated among men? 
Why have we moved up from barbarism? Through 
what organ has the " determinate or purposive 
change '^ worked the way of the Most High? Hu- 

[217] 



Right Living 

manity is a bundle of contradictions. Yet spirit- 
ually there is a law of regression. We tend to 
spiritual averages. No one is all good or all bad. 
There is no race of moral giants, any more than 
a race of physical giants. Nor are there races of 
moral dwarfs and moral starvelings. The divine 
spark is in every soul. In a crisis the meanest 
man may become a hero. Indeed there is no pro- 
fession of heroes. The charlatan, the oppressor 
of the poor, the courtesan, or the thief has seen 
the spark of divinity flare up within him in some 
great crisis, and as it burned it has shown a hero. 
It is doubtful whether any human being falls so 
low that he will not give up even his life upon a 
grand impulse to save a fellow sufferer in agony. 
This holy spirit is in every heart. The inheritance 
of the divine spark is an universal endowment. It 
is the fundamental claim men have upon one an- 
other as brothers. We are equals in the democ- 
racy of the holy spirit — in the potential spark 
of heroship. Great souls are they whose enlight- 
ened sensibilities make each day a grand crisis, 
every neighbor an object of sacrificial love. But 
the fire that burned in Christ's heart, and the fire 
that burned in the thief's heart who gave his life 
for a child in the street, are one fire. Christ knew 
this. He accepted the scarlet woman as sister, 
and the publican as brother. Over and over the 

[218] 



Messages to Youth 

spark is planted in untold billions of hearts as the 
ages pass; and slowly as our sensibilities widen, 
our customs change. So comes progress, and the 
fire glows larger in our common lives. That divine 
spark is the realest thing we know in the universe 
— more real even than the ether. For while we 
have the mighty round of things upon this globe, 
from light and air and water and earth up through 
vegetation to animal life; there comes a place 
where the narrow material cycle touches a segment 
of the wider round — where the ether thrills with 
a human vision. There, in that holy of holies, the 
human consciousness, creation's plan begins anew, 
and God says. Let there be light, and lo, there is 
light. 



EFFICIENCY AND PREPARATION 

W. E. Stone^ President^ Purdue University 

On my desk is a piece of work representing an 
exercise prescribed for freshmen students in shop 
work. It is a simple task requiring no special skill 
or knowledge in its construction. The article it- 
self is a common and useful thing. 

When the freshman undertakes to make this he 
[219] 



Bight Living 

is furnished the materials and tools and is care- 
fully instructed how to proceed. As a part of the 
system prevailing in the University shops, not only 
is the quality of the job noted but an accurate ac- 
count is kept of the time required by each student 
to complete the task. The records show that the 
average time used by over 800 students in doing 
this exercise has been five hours and forty-eight 
minutes. This represents the efficiency of un- 
skilled, untrained men. 

One day I asked one of the instructors in the 
shops to demonstrate how quickly and well he 
could make the same article, and this he proceeded 
to do. With incredible accuracy and facility he 
set about the process. It was a pleasure to observe 
the certainty and swiftness of his movements ; with 
no needless repetitions, every operation and act 
was one of a series following in definite sequence 
leading to the completed work. When it was 
finished, the stop watch showed that it had been 
done in eleven minutes and fifty-seven seconds. 
This represents the efficiency of a skilled and 
trained man in a simple operation; thirty times 
as great as that of the freshman, to say nothing of 
the superior quality of the product. 

I have selected this incident as an example of 
what training does for a man or a woman not only 
in manual operations but in the intellectual world. 

[220] 



Messages to Youth 

It IS impossible to think of any present or pro- 
posed act or operation, any kind of work, or play 
either for that matter, in which training will not 
make a person at least thirty times more efficient 
and consequently thirty times more valuable than 
without it. 

It seems almost absurd to take the pains to prove 
such a proposition, and yet there are thousands of 
young men and women in Indiana who do not act 
on their certain knowledge of this truth. How 
many boys and girls with the absolute certainty 
that they must earn their living are making only 
feeble and reluctant efforts to get ready to do so 
efficiently and successfully, who are learning no 
trade; securing no training; and are even un- 
willing to press forward toward an education which 
shall be the foundation for special skill or knowl- 
edge on some pursuit or profession. Could any 
course of conduct be more foolish or improvident 
than this ? 

Because I observe so much of this tendency, my 
brief message to you is on this theme and I urge 
you and all young people in all relations of life 
to make the most of their opportunities, be they 
great or small, to obtain an education and training 
and preparation for life's work. No matter what 
your call is or your station in life, remember your 
efficiency and your value will be increased not 
[221 ] 



Right Living 

thirty but a hundred fold by your earnest and 
thorough preparation for your work. 



A CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN 

W. H. Lewis, Dean of Law School, University of 
Pennsylvania 

Each one of us wants to be something more 
than merely a good man. We want to be strong ; 
and it is perhaps true that most of us would 
rather be strong than merely good. At the same 
time the man who has only a strong will and noth- 
ing more, is not to be admired. 

It is a good thing to have a strong character. 
It is an infinitely better thing to have a strong 
character so trained that in any situation our in- 
stinct — what we may call our character reactions 
— will be those of a Christian gentleman. 



THE NEW HEALTH CONSCIENCE 

Walter H. Page, Ambassador to England 

Dr. McLaughlin of the federal health service 
is authority for the estimate that at least 25,000 

[ 222 ] 



Messages to Youth 

persons in the United States die every year from 
typhoid — a greater sacrifice of life than the bu- 
bonic plague or cholera causes in the Orient, and 
a far greater economic loss. And it is a national 
humiliation that this loss in the United States 
should be so very much greater than in European 
countries. 

The economic loss caused by typhoid cases that 
are not fatal — the weeks of illness and the cost 
of the care of nursing — are estimated at 100 
millions of dollars a year. 

All this because of a disease that can be pre- 
vented mainly by sanitary control of the water 
supply; and, this failing, now by inoculation. 

The local health ofBcer in many communities 
is a country doctor without power — till an epi- 
demic breaks out — without vigilance, and without 
the habit of doing things. The general ignorance 
of danger is a disgrace to what we call " educa- 
tion." From the country home, where the pigpen 
has been carefully built so that it will drain into 
the well, to the cities on our great lakes, the lack 
of knowledge, of care, of regulation, of authority 
are relics of the primitive period of thought when 
disease was a visitation of God for our sins. 

It is much less important who shall be president 
than what safeguards shall be thrown around the 
public health. The giving of compulsory vitality 

[223 ] 



Right hiving 

to every health officer in the land and the choice 
of the best man in every community for that office 
and the enactment and enforcement of good-health 
laws would mean a greater gain to the happiness 
and to the economic welfare of the people than the 
election of any man whatsoever to the presidency. 

There is now enough knowledge of sanitation 
and of the prevention of disease, if it were applied, 
to take many of the risks out of life and to add 
very appreciably to the average of its duration; 
and there is no more useful work than getting 
this knowledge put to use. But the old-time con- 
ventionalities still hold us captive. For example, 
if you see a man hurt by an accident, you will 
instantly run to his rescue and you will call a 
doctor without a moment's delay. But you will 
look at an insanitary outhouse on a road that 
you may travel every day and you will never feel 
at liberty to tell the owner the danger he runs, nor 
will you think of calling a sanitary officer's atten- 
tion to it. Most of our codes of conduct are based 
on the old-time theory of disease as a dispensation 
of God — till something sudden happens, such as 
an accident or an epidemic. 

The medical profession is very rapidly chang- 
ing its attitude to the public. 

But perhaps the greatest single agency of in- 
struction and publicity is the schol. The compul- 

[ 224] 



Messages to Youth 

sory attention to the pupils' health that has become 
the law in many communities is waking up the 
people. Preventive medicine is making its way, 
too, into the curriculum of the schools. More and 
more this must go on till the teacher becomes a 
practical sanitary expert and the activities of 
every school begin with health and — end with it, 
too. For you cannot make a better course of 
study, than by working out such a scheme of in- 
struction and of living. 



THE CHOICE OF A FAITH 

Arthur T. Hadley, President^ Yale University 

In the last months the whole American world 
has been shocked by the revelations of immoral 
methods in the conduct of business and politics on 
the part of men who had enjoyed the respect of 
the community. We have asked ourselves over and 
over again how it was possible that such men, hon- 
orable, high-minded, and self-respecting to all out- 
ward appearance, should have accepted wrong 
customs without protest. 

But if any of us will look at his own present 
and prospective temptations, the answer is not 

[225] 



Bight Living 

far to seek. The moment we choose as our exam- 
ple of professional success the man who has made 
a fortune or secured an ofBce or achieved a repu- 
tion with the world, we tend to put fortune and 
office and reputation in the foreground, and to re- 
gard the question of how we use the fortune or 
office or reputation as an unimportant incident. 
When things once get into this shape in our minds, 
every position of honor or power becomes a posi- 
tion of peril to our soul. The greater the crisis 
we are called upon to face, the greater the ruin 
that follows. In the quadrangle of Leland Stan- 
ford University there was a magnificent memorial 
arch, that stood as a monument to its builder no 
less than its designer. He had striven for effect, 
and he obtained it. One day there came an earth- 
quake that shook the foundations ; and it was found 
that they were not of solid stone, but chips and 
rubble. Perhaps this man built no worse than 
others ; but the very loftiness of the memorial that 
he had raised served to emphasize the ruin that he 
had wrought. There is no reason to believe that 
Pontius Pilate was worse than a hundred other 
Roman governors ; but it fell to his lot to have his 
work really tried before the Day of Judgment in 
the sight of men as well as of God. 

Stand for the doing of things, by all means. 
Stand for the doing of great things if possible. 

[226] 



Messages to Youth 

But never let the greatness of the thing get so far 
into the foreground as to obscure the purpose for 
which it exists* And above all things, let the honest 
intent to serve others have a larger place in your 
life than the things you are trying to do for your- 
self. It is for this that Jesus stands. He cared 
as much for deeds as anyone. He spoke straight 
to the people who were doing the world's work, in 
his own time and afterward. He was a practical 
man, who took things as he found them — and 
made the best of them — to such an extent that 
this was made a reproach to him by those whose 
range of vision was narrower than his. But when 
his heart's purpose demanded the sacrifice of his 
life and the imperilment of all appearance of 
tangible success, he hesitated not a moment. This 
life and death of Christ show what Paul means by 
faith. It is not belief in a formula; it is not an 
abstract idea of the way in which the universe is 
governed. It is a purpose which dominates a 
man's life; strong enough to enable him to get 
things done, but broad enough and far-reaching 
enough to keep the man larger than his works, his 
range of vision wider than the territory which he 
has conqueered, his readiness for sacrifice ever 
growing with the extent of his achievement. This 
is the belief on the Lord Jesus Christ that saves 
men and nations. 

[227] 



Bight Living 

As we look back on the pages of history, the 
men whose figures rise large and inspiring are not 
those who have amassed fortunes or won battles; 
but those who have strongest stood for princi- 
ple. The battles and the ambitions of a Marl- 
borough, nay, the very empire of a Louis, pale 
before the majestic constancy of purpose of 
William of Orange. In the great drama of slavery 
and secession we draw our largest inspiration from 
the patient endurance of two great, heavy-hearted 
men on opposite sides, unlike in all else but alike 
in unselfish devotion to principle as they under- 
stood it — Lee and Lincoln. What man of you, 
would not prefer the immortality of William to 
that of Louis or Marlborough? Who would not 
choose to bear the burdens of a Lee or a Lincoln, 
rather than to enjoy the honors of the most suc- 
cessful general or the most brilliant orator? And 
who, when he sees Christ standing before the judg- 
ment seat of Pilate, would not throw in his lot 
with the prisoner who, deserted by his friends and 
scarce able to keep up his own courage for the 
ordeal, stands out at that moment as the supreme 
revelation of God to man, an embodiment of the 
faith that is to save the world? 

When you see these things clearly, you know 
where you stand. But it is going to be hard to 
see things clearly. " The world is too much with 

[228] 



Messages to Youth 

us." The necessity for making a living keeps our 
minds so bound down to the details of professional 
success that we sometimes forget that there is 
anything except professional success to live for. 
The necessity of conforming our habits and stand- 
ards to the habits and standards of those about us, 
in order that we may do efficient work, makes us 
forget that there is a point where conformity 
ceases to be a virtue. The greater the measure of 
success we attain the harder it sometimes becomes 
to keep our ideals ahead of our achievements. If 
you want to have in you the stuff that makes 
heroes, you must begin now. As the earthquake 
shock tests the building's foundations, so will the 
great emergencies of life test the material which 
we have been putting into our lives from the be- 
ginning. If we are content to admire the men 
who have done things, no matter whether for them- 
selves or for others, we shall be making our life 
a thing of show rather than of substance; good, 
perhaps, in outward appearance, but wanting in 
those qualities which will meet Gods' judgment if 
some great crisis gives them an opportunity to 
know what we really are. But if we care for those 
who have done things for others instead of for 
themselves ; if we accustom ourselves to regard all 
tangible success as a means of service rather than 
as an end in itself; if we delight to think of the 

[229] 



Bight Living 

men and women who have left the world better for 
their having lived in it, and make them our real 
heroes — then are we laying the foundations of a 
life which, when it is tested, shall stand out heroic, 
even as did the life of Jesus the Master. Now, 
while grave temptation is far distant, is the time 
to make ready. Now, when our character is plastic 
and when our very failures can be made to serve 
as lessons; now, when the inspiration of college 
traditions and college friendships is strong in our 
hearts ; now, when our life work lies before us to 
make and mould as we will — now is the time to 
make choice of the faith which will enable us so 
to see things temporal that we lose not the things 
eternal. 

— From Baccalaureate Addresses. By courtesy of 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 



CONSERVATION OF MEN 

William P. Borland, Congressman from Missouri 

No growth in material wealth, desirable as it 
is, should blind our eyes to the first great duty of 
government, which is to care for the safety, health, 
and morals of the people. The greatest asset any 

[230] 



Messages to Youth 

nation may have is a vigorous, free, and intelligent 
citizenship. Every act of legislation should first 
be tried by this test — namely, whether it tends 
toward the safety, happiness, and growth of the 
people. If laws conflict in any way with the rights 
of the people in their highest sense, no considera- 
tion of property or money value should weigh in 
their favor. 

We are in an age of complex life. Division of 
labor is inseparable from civilization and is its 
natural barometer. We measure the advance of 
civilization by the refinements of the division of 
labor. In the old frontier days, the pioneer pro- 
vided for all his wants and protected his own safety 
with his rifle. Today, every man, no matter what 
his position or calling, is a part of a huge machine. 
He does a specialized work for a certain number 
of hours each day, which is but part of a larger 
work carried on by all. Not only does the value of 
his work depend upon the efforts contributed by 
others, but his very safety, both in and out of 
the workshop, depends upon the honesty, care, and 
obedience to law of those about him. He cannot 
inspect for himself the purity of the food he eats, 
the water that he drinks, the safety of the con- 
veyance in which he rides to work, the machine 
with which he is required to do his work, or the 
character and diligence of the persons whom his 

[231 ] 



Right Living 

employers have seen fit to clothe with power over 
his life and health. The very complexity of mod- 
ern life adds to the danger, while it deprives the 
individual man of the means to consult his own 
safety. 

It is the paramount duty of the government to 
watch over the safety of the people. This duty 
is committed to the government as a sacred trust. 
When, by the advance in civilization and material 
wealth, the power of the individual to protect him- 
self is surrendered, it is to the highest interest of 
the Nation that it faithfully performs this trust. 
Its wealth is in its citizens — their skill, their in- 
telligence, and their patriotism. We educate them 
at public expense, and when a citizen thus edu- 
cated reaches years of maturity and by honest 
effort makes himself skillful in a trade of highest 
usefulness to the community, wha^ is his value to 
the state? What may it not hope from his labor, 
directed by a trained mind? There is no money 
value by which to estimate it. 

I will not attempt at this time to go into details 
in regard to the number of men who annually lose 
their lives in the performance of their duty. The 
figures would be shocking and would show us a 
part of the cost we are paying for this wonderful 
material advancement. It has been made a ground 
of reproach against American civilization that we 

[ 232 ] 



Messages to Youth 

hold human life too cheaply, and that more men 
are killed or crippled annually in the war of wealth 
than have fallen in battle in the most bloody cam- 
paigns. Sometimes we are told that this price 
which we pay in human life and limb is a necessity 
— a part of the cost of progress. The world has 
no time to pause and hear the story of the cripple, 
or of the widow or the fatherless. It is interested 
only in the glorious achievements of science and 
commerce. 

But to the man who has gone to his work in the 
morning a free, self-reliant, and skillful workman, 
with high ambition and every prospect of advance- 
ment and success, and who returns at night maimed 
and crippled, to drag his way through life a bur- 
den to those about him, there is another and a 
very different side to this wonderful story of ma- 
terial advancement. For him the light has failed. 
His chances for success are ended. His ambition 
is gone. The achievements by which he might 
have blessed the community in which he lived, the 
labor by which he might have added to the happi- 
ness and widened the opportunities of those de- 
pendent upon him, are cut off. To the state he 
has been changed from an asset to a liability, and 
this has been done by the state's refusal or neglect 
to perform the trust which has been committed 
to it to watch over his safety. 

[ '^SS ] 



Right Living 

We have spoken only of the case of the work- 
man who is maimed or crippled at his work. There 
is another side to the same story. How about 
those dependent upon him? How about the wife 
who fills her husband's dinner pail in the morning 
and kisses him good-by and sends him to his work 
a strong, young, ambitious man, able to provide 
a comfortable home for her and to give an edu- 
cation and a good start in life to his children, and 
who before nightfall finds herself a widow, with 
her prospects all darkened? Here is another 
phase of the question in which the community is 
vitally interested, for it gives rise to new prob- 
lems which affect the entire industrial world. 

One of the greatest evils to which it tends is that 
of child labor. Child labor in factories is dishon- 
est, unwise, and wrong from every standpoint. It 
IS wrong because it cuts down the scale of wages 
of all factory employees by substituting cheap and 
incompetent labor for the better grade. It is 
wrong, because it is an injury to the child and 
constantly endangers his health and morals. It is 
wrong, because it exposes him to dangers where 
his inexperience or inattention may result in last- 
ing injury. It is wrong, because it undermines the 
very foundation of national wealth by destroying 
the rising generation. 

There is no honest profit in the labor of chil- 
[ 234] 



Messages to Youth 

dren. The most profitable place for a child is in 
the schoolhouse. We cannot look with anything 
but horror upon the picture of the inhuman em- 
ployer working gangs of little children ten, twelve, 
and fourteen hours in a factory because of his 
greed for money and a desire to cheapen the cost 
of the production in order that he may drag down 
his more humane competitor to his own base 
method. Children should have the special consid- 
eration of the state. They are its future supply 
both for war and peace. Why should the state al- 
low avarice to fatten by the destruction of these 
little lives, upon which the safety and perpetuity of 
the state depend? They are the future citizens, 
the future fathers and mothers. Upon their 
shoulders soon will be laid the heavy responsibil- 
ities of citizenship, the high duty to preserve a 
great republic, whose destiny constantly is grow- 
ing greater and whose problems are growing more 
serious. 

Child labor in factories is a modern condition. 
It is a modern danger which only the state can 
guard against. We do not speak, of course, of 
that class of little toilers which has been familiar 
in history and literature. I mean the little helpers 
on the farm, who feed the stock and gather the 
garden truck about the old home place. These 
little workers have a free and happy life, healthful 

[235 ] 



Right Laving 

and vigorous, and when winter comes and nature 
has locked up their workshop they have the chance 
for education. 

I know of nothing more important to the whole 
community than the welfare of the rising genera- 
tion. It is a matter which grows more serious 
each year and is vital to the safety of the Repub- 
lic. 

We are not concerned solely with the building of 
battle ships. We are more concerned with build- 
ing homes. The government is looking to its own 
safety when it takes care of the rising generation 
and not only removes them from danger and 
temptation but from a brutalizing and debasing 
competition to cut down the wages of their elders 
who have the responsibilities of home and family 
life. I say it is not beneath the dignity of a great 
government to do this work, and I am reminded 
of that beautiful poem, which doubtless many of 
you have read, called, I believe, " Little Breeches." 

It tells of the old ranchman whose chubby little 
boy wandered away one afternoon from the cabin. 
They searched for him in vain until darkness came 
on. With the darkness came a storm, which in- 
creased in fury to a blizzard. The searchers be- 
gan to have a sickening sense of the hopelessness of 
their task. They were in a vast desolate region far 
from human habitation. There seemed to be but 

[236] 



Messages to Youth 

one tragic end to the search. Still, the father, who 
led the search, struggled on, bareheaded and with 
bleeding hands and knees. The icy wind cut his 
face and the storm howled about him. As the 
night wore away they tried to turn him away, but 
in vain. At last, with the first gray streaks of 
dawn, they found the little boy huddled down, safe 
and warm, in the sheep pens, fast asleep among the 
sheep. How did the boy get in there, with the door 
closed and the windows high? The father insisted 
that the angels had taken the child there. Some 
of his neighbors told him that could not be so ; that 
the angels were up in heaven and had greater 
things to do than to be fooling about in his sheep 
pens. But the father still insisted that it was the 
angels, and insisted that it was useless to tell him 
that they were engaged in better business, " for I 
believe," said he — 

Saving little children and bringing them to their own. 
Is a durn sight better business than loafing 'round 
the throne. 

We hear much in these days about the conserva- 
vation of natural resources. I am heartily in sym- 
pathy with all of it. I believe sincerely that the 
time has come for the Nation to take a step to 
preserve the bountiful resources with which nature 
has endowed this country, and to perpetuate them 
for the benefit of all the people. If left unre- 

[ 237] 



Right Living 

strained there is a tendency on the part of 
promoters to monopolize and exploit this great 
natural wealth so as to entirely consume it to the 
enrichment of a very few and the impoverishment 
of the whole country. 

But I believe more fully in a higher and a more 
noble form of conservation — the conservation of 
men. I believe in the sacred trust of govern- 
ment to watch over the safety of its citizens; to 
lift the burdens from backs that cannot bear them ; 
to make plain the path of honest effort and fling 
wide the door of opportunity to the humblest. 
Little children are the Nation's hope — honest 
men are the pillars of its strength. Men are the 
great natural wealth of any country — greater 
far in value than the most abundant material re- 
sources. If we believe in national conservation, 
let us first begin with the conservation of men, for 
it has been truly said by the poet: 

111 fares the land to gathering ills a prey. 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay. 



HEALTH 



Emily T. Rohbins, President, Commission of One 
Hundred on National Health 

"Who cares about stupid health?" was a re- 
mark I once heard. It well illustrated a point of 

[238] 



Messages to Youth 

view which prevailed in the days of our forefathers, 
but which is seldom heard of today. In the old 
days health was considered vulgar, since it was 
generally the stupid laborer in the field, or his 
wife and helpmeet of the same occupation who was 
robust and healthy. His more wealthy neighbor, 
who thought outdoor work beneath him, often times 
became anaemic and dyspeptic. In that case, of 
course, he demanded a similiar condition of the 
women of his society. So ill health became identi- 
fied with gentility. 

Now, health is " in vogue." The heroine of 
romance no longer languishes and " fades away.'' 
Her cheeks are rosy; she swims; she rides horse- 
back ; above all, she enters vigorously and enthusi- 
astically into the work of life. And is not the 
college athlete the hero of the hour ! I suppose 
this came about by someone, in the old days, dar- 
ing to prefer the healthy woman, or the healthy 
man, and gradually such taste became popular. 

And why? Why is the healthy man or the 
healthy woman preferable to the sick man or the 
sick woman? Which is the more agreeable to look 
at and associate with? Which is the more efficient 
worker? Which is likely to have the best char- 
acter and disposition? Which is happier? 

To appreciate the importance of health, it is 
but necessary to contemplate, for a moment, the 

[239] 



Bight Living 

consequences of ill health. Have you ever tar- 
ried at a sanitarium where the majority of the 
patients are comparatively well, and lived in their 
world of indigestion and inefficiency? Have you 
ever made extensive tours of the hospitals and 
known of the agonies which are there accumulated? 
— Poor disabled human machines, shut away from 
the busy world of joy and industry! Have you 
ever visited the asylums for the insane, with their 
thousands upon thousands of inhabitants staying 
out their periods of mental disablement or linger- 
ing decay? 

If you have, I am sure the sickening horror of 
their tragedies will never be forgotten by you. 
They dwell in living graves. Above them, out of 
their reach, is all the beautiful world — music, and 
art, and science, and great deeds, and great 
thoughts, and noble sentiments ! 

If you have done any of these things can you 
say health is stupid ? Rather say, " The young 
man or the young woman who so lives that ill 
health is brought upon him or upon her that young 
man or young woman is stupid indeed ! '' 

This great subject of health, which plays such 
an important role in your success and happiness, 
seems to be composed of two principal elements: 

One is your inherent makeup. This element is 
illustrated by those types of insanity which are 

[240] 



Messages to Youth 

developed as a result of inherited defects over 
which the individual himself has no control. 

The inherent makeup of those who now dwell 
upon the earth is, of course, beyond our control; 
we cannot go back and choose our ancestors, from 
whom we received it. An analysis of our ances- 
tral traits, however, is generally suggestive of 
those which may be expected to develop in our- 
selves, and the knowledge is likely to be useful in 
fortifying against those traits that are unde- 
sirable. 

But while we cannot choose our ancestors, we 
can choose the ancestors of those who are to dwell 
on the earth after us. We are the only door 
through which they may enter, and upon our 
choice of those who shall open the door, will de- 
pend the inherent makeup of that legion to come 
— our children and our children's children. 

The other element which enters into the ques- 
tion of your health is environment and personal 
habits — breathing, eating, thinking, acting, 
working, resting, and (wittingly or unwittingly) 
exposure to acute diseases. 

As to the latter, the likelihood of your exposing 
yourself to smallpox, for instance, once a menace 
to the people of this country, is now remote, ow- 
ing to the discovery of its causes and the oppor- 
tunity which that discovery afforded for wiping 

[241] 



Bight Living 

out the disease. The probability of your exposing 
yourself to yellow fever is now almost nil. Our 
indefatigable scientists in the federal government 
have saved you this risk. The probability of 
your contracting malaria is now hardly half of 
what it was fifty years ago. Here again our gov- 
ernment has stepped in to protect you. It was one 
of its workers who made the discovery of thef mos- 
quito as being the " intermediary host " between 
you and illness from that disease. You need not 
worry either, about the hookworm disease, for 
this, too, has been routed from its stronghold, as 
a result of the discoveries by our government and 
is now retreating before the fire of knowledge. 

But there are other foes to your health. Some- 
where they lurk in those personal habits, just where 
we do not know exactly. On them they ride mys- 
teriously to victory. We only recognize their 
devastations. These foes are the chronic diseases, 
such as Bright's disease, arterio-sclerosis or some 
forms of insanity. They are chopping off years of 
life of our people at a greater rate than even the 
acute diseases. Of the chronic diseases we know 
practically nothing. There is a chance for some of 
the young men and women of Spiceland Academy 
to become very famous and important by obtain- 
ing some real knowledge of them, and giving it to 
the world ! In the meantime, experience has taught 

[ 242 ] 



Messages to Youth 

that there are certain rules which it is safe to fol- 
low : to breathe fresh air, to be abstemious in diet, 
to be temperate, to be self-controlled, to avoid 
over-fatigue, to be chaste, and to be clean. 



REAL MEN 

Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President, University of 
California 

I am aware how much truth and inspiration re- 
side in the pregnant statement that every man 
makes his own world. Yes, a man makes his own 
world, but he cannot expect to " make it up " 
like a story. Thinking a thing is so does not 
make it so, no matter if you think it so seven times, 
yea seventy times seven. You have at the most 
baked your self-delusion into a hard looking sub- 
stance called prejudice. In quiet times it may 
pose as hewn stone, but the first shock will crum- 
ble the plaster and disclose the laths by which 
you lied to yourself. 

The world into which you are entering is a real 
world and not a play. There is a good deal of 
paper scenery in evidence, I admit — some tin 
spears, penciled eyebrows, and sham thunder. The 

[243] 



Right Living 

average man, I fear, is all too ready to take on 
any mask that happens to be passed him, catch 
the cue, and follow wherever the lines lead. Think- 
ing is hard and it is, of course, easier to memorize 
the lines than make them. It is easier still to 
be a puppet pulled with a string and let the ven- 
triloquist do the talking behind the box. But 
none of this is by right for you. We expect you 
to be real men and women in a real world. 

Lest my symbols be misunderstood I want to 
illustrate in plain language what I mean by tak- 
ing the mask that happens to be handed one. A 
certain student thinks he proves his manliness by 
wearing a heavy sweater and corduroy trousers 
with the pockets full of hands, and gleans from 
his opportunity of study and the self-denial of his 
parents the reputation of strenuous bravery in 
disturbing a class election and the right to wear 
a society pin and a painted hat. All these things 
are merely the tin tops of a make believe world, 
but they are small matters and of small signifi- 
cance, provided the spirit of their use do not fol- 
low a man out into life. You can scarcely tell 
whether you are practical adherents of the view 
that the world is real or the view that it is a mum- 
mery and a sham. But you will soon be able to 
determine. If you find yourself doing things for 
effect, courting popularity by catering to public 

[ 244] 



Messages to Youth 

opinion, trying to make out a case more than to 
state the truth, seeking to create opinion regard- 
ing a person, an institution, or an act, arbitrarily 
and by main force rather than justly; if you find 
yourself promoting, cajoling, deceiving, rather 
than unfolding, interpreting, revealing, you need 
have no longer any doubt; you are acting a part, 
not living a life ; you are wearing a mask, not bar- 
ing your honest face ; you are rehearsing the lines 
of a role, not telling the truth; you are making 
life a play and the world a sham. 

I tell you this is a plain, regular-going, real old 
world. It is in substance just about what it ap- 
pears to be. The things that seem to be trees 
are trees; the things that seem to be rocks are 
rocks ; the lakes and the oceans are made of water, 
real water ; it is a substance containing insufficient 
oxygen to support human life and every time a 
man is covered with it, in a certain number of 
minutes that man will die. It is surprisingly 
regular in its action. Objects drop to the earth 
with similar regularity. If a man parts company 
with the roof of an eight story building directly 
over a stone pavement, it is possible to calculate 
with amazing precision just what will happen, no 
matter how important a person the man may be or 
how strongly opposed he may be to what is going 
on. Stone is really hard and not merely a form 
[245] 



Right Living 

of thought. Gravitation is not a whiff or whim 
to be cajoled away by ingratiating manners, to be 
reached by influence, to be dispelled by force of 
will ; it is a plain matter-of-fact institution not dis- 
posed to speculative enterprises. No less matter- 
of-fact, however, is the power that wakens within 
us the consciousness of ought and sends through 
human life the thrill of duty. Our assurance that 
the world is real is ultimately founded in our con- 
viction guaranteed in an unwavering experience 
that there is a deep plan behind the haze of appari- 
tions and the tangle of materials and motives a 
perfectly plain and simple plan which we know as 
the moral order. There is a way to do that is 
in accordance with the spirit of the system, and 
there is a way to do that is in discord with the 
system; the latter brings with unerring certainty 
distress and death, the former peace and profit. 
Distress of soul and waste of being constitutes 
a real hell, peace of mind and upbuilding of life 
constitute a real heaven — the moral world is the 
real world. 

The reason why we have a right to expect you 
to be real men and women in a real world is that 
your training here has been planned to deliver you 
from the bondage of superstition, open you the 
way toward honest things, and quicken in you the 
love of the genuine and true. You have studied 

[246] 



Messages to Youth 

the record of human history that you may know 
how to correct the nightmares of legend and tra- 
dition into the facts of broad daylight. You have 
studied literature and other human arts that your 
souls may be in tune and make response to work 
and beauty. You have studied environing Nature 
that you may replace mystery and dread with 
knowledge of her moods and ways so that men 
may dwell in accord with her and enroll her giant 
service in the forwarding of human life. 



A NEW SCHOOL YEAR 

Nicholas Murray Butler^ Presidenty Columbia 
University 

On each recurring commencement day it is nat- 
ural for us to look back at what has been accom- 
plished in the year that has passed. On the 
opening day of a new year it is equally natural 
to look forward with hope and anticipation to the 
new paths that are opening out before us. To 
such a new year I offer a cordial and heartfelt 
welcome to the scholars who teach and to the 
scholars who learn. 

We shall at once start each upon his separate 
way, but we shall be animated throughout the 
year by a common purpose and by a common love 
and loyalty to the school which includes us all and 

[247] 



Right Living 

which makes possible the rich and helpful oppor- 
tunities that are offered to us. 

Let us each resolve during the academic year 
now opening to strengthen and make firmer our 
hold upon something that is worth while, something 
that is raised above the temporary turmoils and 
vulgar self-seeking of the day. Let us close our 
ears, so far as possible, to the roar of malice, 
untruthfulness, and slander that fills the air of 
this year of grace. 

There is one word of counsel that I offer to 
each one, whatever his field of study, and whatever 
his chief intellectual occupation. Resolve to pass 
the year in company with some one high and noble 
character that has left a mark on the world and 
set a standard which is at once an invitation and 
inspiration. Doubtless many such suggest them- 
selves ; but to be concrete and specific, I will name 
some that occur to me as of particular significance 
and interest just now. 

Let the year be made noteworthy, for example, 
by passing it in company with the poetry of Alfred 
Tennyson, a poet who will one day be even more 
highly appreciated than at present, not only for 
the sweetness of his song, but for the scope and 
profundity of his thought. Do not read at poetry 
of Tennyson, do not read about the poetry of 
Tennyson, but read the poetry of Tennyson itself. 

[248 ] 



Messages to Youth 

Commit to memory some of those passages which 
are at once a comfort and a delight to all intelli- 
gent persons. 

Or, if in another mood, pass the year in close 
and familiar company with the essays of Emerson. 
Learn from him the difference between gold and 
dross. Learn from him the secret of the perpetual 
movement of the spirit and the secret of the mak- 
ing of standards. Let him teach you how to think 
about things that matter. Go with him along the 
bypaths of reflection until you become familiar 
and in love with some of the most charming nooks 
and crannies into which real thought penetrates. 

Or, again, if thirsting for the companionship 
of a life of action and of service, driven by the 
motive power of high purpose and a moral ideal, 
spend the year with that masterpiece of biography. 
Lord Morley's Life of Gladstone. In those vol- 
umes you may watch the growth of a powerful 
mind and a strong character through contact with 
great problems and large ideals. You may witness 
a course of education in public affairs through as- 
sociation with genuine problems, with real public 
interests, and with the highest conceptions of a 
nation's service. 

A fourth suggestion occurs to me. The nine- 
teenth century left no nobler or inspiring life than 
Pasteur. Perhaps you may prefer to pass the year 

[ 249 ] 



Right Living 

in company with that life as told by Valley-Radot. 
The history of scientific inquiry contains nothing 
more full of suggestion and more abundant in 
conquest than the story of the life of this greatest 
of modern Frenchmen. From that story you may 
learn the real meaning of the words " scientific 
method." From that story you may learn the real 
meaning of the conception of science in the serv- 
ice of public weal. 

Whether you choose as your companion of the 
year the poetry of Tennyson, or the essays of 
Emerson, or the life of Gladstone, or the life of 
Pasteur, you will have an association never to be 
forgotten. From this companionship you will gain 
a center point about which to organize your own 
personal academic studies. From it you will gain 
a keystone for the arch you are hoping to build. 
From it you will get a sense of achievement and 
of worth that will contribute powerfully to your 
intellectual and moral growth as a human being. 



GROW, GROW, GROW 

Kenyan Butterfieldy President, Massachusetts 
Agricultural College 

When I was in college the governor of the state 
gave an inspiring talk to the student body. He 

[ 250 ] 



Messages to Youth 

was a man of great vigor who had comparatively 
little schooling, and yet who had made a very 
successful farmer, leader of the grange, and prob- 
ably the best governor that the state of Michigan 
has had in a generation. I cannot remember the 
topic, but I shall never forget one sentence: 
" When you have decided what to do, go at it 
with all your might and stick, stick, stick." 

I would not abate one jot from this advice. No 
success is possible except by everlasting persever- 
ance. But while we are persevering in the task 
to which we have set our hands, I should like to 
have the young men and young women of America 
think of another ambition that is even greater and 
larger than the ambition to succeed in what one 
undertakes. 

The greatest task in life is to live worthy of 
the divinity that is in us. The biggest job that 
each one of us has is to grow into the largest, the 
richest, the firmest manhood and womanhood pos- 
sible. We cannot develop this largeness and rich- 
ness and fineness in a day. It takes time. It is 
the result of toil, of defeat, of joy, of sorrow. 
It never comes to the Indolent man; it has to be 
purchased by a strenuous life. 

I sometimes think that the great difference be- 
tween men is their capacity to grow. Some men 
are really no more mature at fifty than they were 

[251] 



Right Living 

at twenty. Some men keep or\ growing as long 
as they live. 

And is not that, after all, what we are here on 
this earth for — to grow? Can you think of any 
better excuse for existence than to become the 
largest, the richest, the finest character possible? 
I do not mean to say that you must always be 
thinking of yourself. In fact, the best way to 
grow is not to think about growing, but to think 
how you can make yourself of the largest use 
in the world. Your attempt to fit yourself for the 
greatest usefulness and service to your fellow be- 
ings will give you the best growth. 

So I say keep in mind what you are really in 
the world for: what is, after all, the great object 
of life that lies way down deep underneath all 
your labor, all your play, all your planning — it 
is grow, grow, grow. 



THE DIRECTION OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 

Julian W. Mack, Judge, U. S. Commerce Court 

During the past decade we have all been afire 
with enthusiasm born of the newer and nobler 
thought that prevention is better than the cure. 

[252] 



Messages to Youth 

The golden age of childhood had arrived. How- 
ever we might deal with the adult victim of social 
wrongs, to the child we were determined to accord 
the birthright of every human being — the oppor- 
tunity for the development of its highest powers. 
To prevent it from engaging too early and in too 
dangerous occupations, to substitute the school 
for the factory, to save it from the brutal and 
criminalizing treatment that still marked the pre- 
vailing method of dealing with the adult offender, 
these were the movements that enlisted the cooper- 
ation of enlightened philanthropists and resulted 
in the enactment of anti-child labor, compulsory 
education and juvenile court laws. 

The substitution of love and sympathy and un- 
derstanding for punishment, of probation for im- 
prisonment, of the industrial school for the 
reformatory and penitentiary, is such a great step 
forward in our civilization that no temporary set- 
backs, whether due to the failure to accomplish 
or to the reactionary opposition of baffled poli- 
ticians, can stay its triumphal onward march. 

For some years, however, we have been passing 
beyond the mere age of preventive work. Eradi- 
cation of evil is not enough. Constructive philan- 
thropy demands that it be replaced by the positive 
good. Childhood needs protection against the 
dangers of evil birth. Infant mortality is to be 

[253] 



Right Living 

reduced and the age of babyhood made safer, by 
preventing the sale of impure milk and adulterated 
food. 

The child's right to a healthy normal family life 
is to be met not merely by forbidding child labor 
and by destroying the pest-breeding hovels of the 
slums, but also by maintaining the integrity of the 
family through freeing the wage earner from un- 
necessary and avoidable industrial accidents and 
diseases threatening the premature death, through 
making it possible for the widowed mother to re- 
main at home and devote herself to the nurture and 
training of her children. 

The child's right to an education is not satis- 
fied by an adherence to the old-time curriculum 
suited, if at all, to but few of the more fortunate 
of the pupils, but requires the introduction into 
the public school system of manual and industrial 
training, of continuation and vacation and open 
air classes, of the visiting teachers and the newer 
method of individualization, to the end that each 
child's true vocation may, if possible, be found and 
that it may be fitted spiritually, morally, mentally 
and physically to unfold all its latent resources. 
No longer should we wait for the child to go wrong 
or be orphaned and to be sent to one of the excel- 
lent industrial schools maintained for delinquent 
and dependent children, in order that it may re- 

[254] 



' Messages to Youth 

ceive the education fitting It for Its life work; no 
longer should the child get into the juvenile court 
before giving it a thorough examination to dis- 
cover and to repair decayed teeth, adenoid growths, 
impaired eyesight and hearing, and other latent 
defects. Constructive philanthropy insists that 
the child, compelled to go to school, shall be in 
every way fitted to pursue its studies. The physi- 
cian and the nurse in the school room, far from 
lessening the parental responsibility, will enable 
the state to know wherein the parents have neg- 
lected or failed In their duties, and will afford a 
safe legal basis for the enforcement thereof. 

The child's right to play should not be limited 
to the opportunities on the street; it needs the 
supervised playground, the athletic field, the gym- 
nasium and the swimming pool. 

To close indecent dance halls, to suppress im- 
proper shows, whether in the larger or in the nickel 
theaters, and to destroy other places where vice 
disguised in gaudy and, to the untutored, highly 
attractive garbs and colors, beckons youth to 
its destruction, will not suffice. Through church 
and settlement, school centers and municipal halls, 
our young people must be given the opportunity 
to satisfy decently, beautifully, sanely, their ever 
insistent and justifiable cry for recreation and 
happiness. 



Right Living 

Adolescents must be guarded from the dangers 
of that period, not only by the development and 
strengthening of character through the teachings 
of religion and morality, but also by wise and care- 
ful instruction in the mysteries of life itself and 
in the terrible dangers both to the guilty and to the 
innocent that follow in the wake of sexual abuses 
and wrongs. 

But in the past few years, a voice, never silent 
in the history of the world, has been growing 
deeper and louder — the voice of man calling unto 
men, not for alms, not for charity, but for justice. 
Not that we would for a moment replace love with 
justice, not that we would banish mercy and com- 
passion, not that we would emphasize rights and 
minimize duties; on the contrary, true social jus- 
tice implies love, compassion, and personal service. 
It demands, however, that society in its organized 
capacity shall secure each individual in the full 
enjoyment of all those fundamental rights without 
which no human being can fulfill his God-given 
destiny. As we advance in civilization, they will 
increase in number and broaden in extent. Among 
our rights, in addition to those of the children 
already enumerated and those guaranteed in 
all of our constitutions, is the right to work and 
to secure the just fruits of one's labor, and, there- 
fore to protection against unemployment and 

[256^ 



Messages to Youth 

against a wage less than the sufficient amount to 
maintain the family in decency according to the 
prevailing standards of a free and prosperous 
people. We have the right to life itself, and, 
therefore, to protection, so far as humanly possi- 
ble, against over-fatigue and other industrial 
poisons and accidents. We have the right to 
reasonable hours for self -improvement and the 
upbuilding of the family, and, therefore, to pro- 
tection against exploitation, the seven-day week, 
and unduly long hours of labor. We have 
the right to old age, reasonably free from care 
and anxiety, and, therefore, the opportunity for 
adequate insurance against everything that threat- 
ens to impoverish or imperil the family, the cor- 
ner-stone of our civilization. 

That the influx of vast numbers of diverse races 
brings with it peculiar difficulties unknown to other 
nations, is not to be denied. Are we, however, in 
such danger therefrom that we must close the gates 
of our country to honest, thrifty, characterful 
people of the old world, who, like our forefathers, 
come to the Promised Land, seeking for themselves 
and their children a refuge from religious, political 
or even economical oppression? Shall we depart 
from our settled policy of regulation and inaugu- 
rate an era of restriction, requiring of the sturdy 
peasants of Europe, as a condition of their admis- 
[257] 



Right Living 

sion that they will have acquired the power to read 
and write, though their mother land has denied 
them the opportunity therefor? Aye, more, shall 
we as a nation, for the first time, deliver up polit- 
ical refugees guilty of no crimes in this land of 
liberty ? If it were conceivable that the best inter- 
ests of the people of the United States could re- 
quire such legislation no claims of humanity at 
large should prevent its adoption. But if, as many 
of us think, this country needs for the fulfillment 
of its true destiny the free assimilable blood of 
many nations; if, as many of us contend, it re- 
quires for its material advancement the brawn 
and strength of Europe's masses; if, as many of 
us believe, a nation of great material prosperity 
can best avert the ever threatening danger of the 
loss of its ideals by drawing into its citizenship the 
poets, the thinkers, the prophets, the seers, and 
the martyrs of other peoples, then assuredly the 
day of more restrictive immigration laws has not 
yet come. 

But whatever our views on the question, theref 
can be no difference of opinion as to our duty 
towards those immigrants who meet our require- 
ments and enter our portals. Upon our treat- 
ment of them will depend their future usefulness. 
If we permit them, in their ignorance of our Ian- 
gauge and our customs, to become the victims of 

[258] 



Messages to Youth 

the forces of vice and crime that in all of our 
larger cities are lying in wait for them, we shall 
quickly reap the harvest of our folly. 

The united action of private organizations, the 
municipality, the state and nation must lighten 
the pathway of the newcomers and guide them 
safely toward their goal of American citizenship. 

The true spirit of social justice of the twentieth 
century demands that. The welfare of the state 
and the people thereof requires that the financial 
burdens resulting from the inevitable accidents 
and occupational diseases of our present indus- 
trial system shall be borne by the business rather 
than the worker, legislation along these lines must 
in one way or the other be made possible. 

Potent, however, as is the force of law, organized 
society can but voice the desires of its members. 
Social advance is dependent upon individual prog- 
ress. Until the spirit of love for our fellowmen, 
regardless of race, color, or creed, shall fill the 
world, making real in our lives and in our deeds 
the actuality of human brotherhood deduced from 
that common fatherhood to which all of us, though 
in different ways, ultimately subscribe; until the 
great mass of people shall be filled with the sense 
of their obligation to strive mightily for the bet- 
terment of their fellow workmen through service, 
social justice can never be attained. 
[ 259 ] 



Right Living 

Whatever our differences may be, we shall all 
agree with Montefiore, that while " religion is 
more than good air, good water, good food, good 
wages, in its social fullness it is not less.'' How- 
ever strong may be the emphasis that has here- 
tofore been laid upon social service as a religious 
duty, surely the bonds of human brotherhood would 
be strengthened and the cause of social justice 
advanced if a broader forward movement, limited 
not to men, and not to the followers of a single 
religion, were, by the united action of representa- 
tives of all faiths, carried into every village, ham- 
let and city of our land. We should not have to 
await another Titanic disaster to find all men, 
regardless of race and creed, rank and station, 
riches and poverty, standing together upon a com- 
mon platform of genuine democracy, vying with 
each other in upholding the noblest traditions of 
the race, sacrificing even life itself in the service 
of the weakest and the poorest of their fellows. 



SCIENCE AND FAITH 

Elmer E. Browny President^ New York University 

A good friend of mine has recently published 
an article in which he undertakes to show that 

[260] 



Messages to Youth 

every phase of human life will, in time, be brought 
under the operation of scientific certainty, until 
things unknown or unforeseen and every daring 
adventure shall have disappeared from human ex- 
perience. 

To my mind, men make such prophecies as these 
only when imagination fails. The circle of human 
knowledge is an ever widening circle. But what 
are the limits of that unknown universe over which 
it is so rapidly extending its sway? Are the re- 
sources of infinity so scanty that we may expect 
in any assignable time to have reached its farthest 
bound .'^ 

We may think of our silence as an island in a 
great ocean — an island growing in all directions 
more rapidly than the coral islands of the southern 
seas. More and more, men are enabled to live 
their, lives on the basis of established and verified 
and organized fact; but the ocean is not like an 
ocean on this earth, which has shores on every 
side; and which might conceivably, within billions 
of years, be filled up by that island to its farthest 
bound. The island of our science is rather like 
a planet out in the infinite space. If, like a bub- 
ble blown by a child, that planet were to be en- 
larged and ever more enlarged, the space would 
still be as infinite beyond. And the fact that 
our science becomes not thinner and more fragile, 
> [ 261 ] 



Right lAving 

but more solid and substantial, as it increases in 
extent, does not change the fact that there is that 
beyond, evermore, which it may not pretend to 
have made its own. 

If this is to be the case in very truth, then to 
increase knowledge will mean at the same time to 
enlarge our human capacity for surmise and ex- 
pectation. The things learned will reveal more 
and more the extent of the undiscovered terri- 
tories, and will tempt the most courageous among 
us to new enterprise of exploration. And he who 
has learned most will continue to be the one least 
satisfied with his acquisitions, and most eager to 
seek after wisdom. 

Seen in this way, the work of the school and that 
of the church appear in closest and most last- 
ing connection, the one with the other. The school 
concerns itself with things known, with the knowl- 
edge of the scientist, and with the enlargement of 
the sphere of such knowledge. The church con- 
cerns itself with things unseen and eternal, in 
so far as they affect the dearest interests of human 
life. 

Will the increase of knowledge drive the church 
to the wall, till her occupation shall be gone? The 
very question presupposes a poor and petty con- 
ception of the extent of God's universe, a childish 
and ridiculous limitation of that which mankind 

[262] 



Messages to Youth 

has yet to learn. Why, every new truth that 
science shall establish will give a longer shore-line 
for the out-look of faith, and a new harbor from 
which her galleys of adventure may set forth. 
The unseen world will make its religious appeal to 
men so long as there is sorrow and sacrifice and 
death in this world. While science in our age 
seems to have drawn to itself much of that ab- 
sorbed attention which the highest intellect of 
other ages has given to religion, the day will come 
— I venture to make this prophecy — when relig- 
ion will again claim as wide an interest among men 
as ever in the past, and the conquests of modern 
science will be found to have prepared the way 
for that consummation. 



WHY I AM AN OPTIMIST 

Helen Keller 

Most of us regard happiness as the proper end 
of all earthly enterprise. The will to be happy 
animates alike the philosopher, the prince, and 
the chimney-sweep. No matter h6w dull, or how 
mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happi- 
ness is his indisputable right. 

[ 263 ] 



Right Living 

It IS curious to observe what diiferent ideals of 
happiness people cherish, and in what singular 
places they look for this well-spring of their life. 
Many look for it in the hoarding of riches, some 
in the pride of power, and others in the achieve- 
ments of art and literature; a few seek it in the 
exploration of their own minds, or in the search 
for knowledge. 

Most people measure their happiness in terms 
of physical pleasure and material possession. If 
happiness is to be so measured. I, who can not 
hear or see, have every reason to sit in a corner 
with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in 
spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so 
deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it be- 
comes a philosophy of life — if, in short, I am 
an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism 
is worth hearing. 

Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and 
darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love 
came and set my soul free. Once I knew only 
darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and 
joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the 
wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the con- 
sciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. 
My life was without past or future; death, the 
pessimist would say, " consummation devoutly to 
be wished.'' But a little word from the finger of 

[ 264] 



Messages to Youth 

another fell into my hand that clutched at empti- 
ness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. 
Night fled before the day of thought, and love 
and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedi- 
ence to knowledge. Can anyone who has escaped 
such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory 
of freedom, be a pessimist? 

I long to accomplish a great and noble task; 
but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish 
humble tasks as though they were great and noble. 

Go to India and see what sort of civilization is 
developed when a nation lacks faith in progress 
and bows to the gods of darkness. Under the 
influence of Brahminism genius and ambition have 
been suppressed. There is not one to befriend the 
poor or to protect the fatherless and the widow. 
The sick lie untended. The blind know not how 
to see, nor the deaf to hear, and they are left by 
the roadside to die. In India it is a sin to teach 
the blind and the deaf because their affliction is 
regarded as a punishment for offenses in a pre- 
vious state of existence. If I had been born in 
the midst of these fatalistic doctrines, I should 
still be in darkness, my life a desert land where 
no caravan of thought might pass between my 
spirit and the world beyond. 

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement ; 
nothing can be done without hope. When our f ore- 

[ ^^^ ] 



Right Living 

fathers laid the foundation of the American com- 
monwealths, what nerved them to their task but 
a vision of a free community? Against the cold, 
inhospitable sky, across the wilderness white with 
snow, where lurked the hidden savage, gleamed 
the bow of promise, toward which they set their 
faces with the faith that levels mountains, fills 
up valleys, bridges rivers and carries civilization 
to the uttermost parts of the earth. Although 
the pioneers could not build according to the 
Hebraic ideal they saw, yet they gave the pattern 
of all that is most enduring in our country today. 
They brought to the wilderness the thinking mind, 
the printed book, the deep-rooted desire for self- 
government and the English common law that 
judges alike the king and the subject, the law on 
which rests the whole structure of our society. 

It is significant that the foundation of that law 
is optimistic. In Latin countries the court pro- 
ceeds with a pessimistic bias. The prisoner is 
held guilty until he is proved innocent. In Eng- 
land and the United States there is an optimistic 
presumption that the accused is innocent until it 
is no longer possible to deny his guilt. Behold, the 
law of the two most sober-minded, practical, and 
law-abiding nations on earth assumes the good 
in man and demands a proof of the bad. 

Even on Christmas day do men remember that 
[266] 



Messages to Youth 

Christ came as a prophet of good? His joyous 
optimism is like water to feverish lips, and has 
for its highest expression the eight beatitudes. It 
is because Christ is an optimist that for ages he 
has dominated the western world. For nineteen 
centuries Christendom has gazed into his shining 
face and felt that all things work together for 
good. St. Paul, too, taught the faith which looks 
beyond the hardest things into the infinite hori- 
zon of heaven, where all limitations are lost in 
the light of perfect understanding. If you are 
born blind, search the treasures of darkness. They 
are more precious than the gold of Ophir. They 
are love and goodness and truth and hope, and 
their price is above rubies and sapphires. 

Jesus utters, and Paul proclaims a message of 
peace and a message of reason, a belief in the 
idea, not in things, in love, not in conquest. The 
optimist is he who sees that men's actions are di- 
rected not by squadrons and armies, but by moral 
power; that the conquests of Alexander and Na- 
poleon are less abiding than Newton's and Galileo's 
and St. Augustine's silent mastery of the world. 
Ideas are mightier than fire and sword. Noiselessly 
they propagate themselves from land to land, and 
mankind goes out and reaps the rich harvest and 
thanks God; but the achievements of the warrior 
are like his canvas city, " today a camp, tomorrow 
[ 267 ] 



Right Living 

all struck and vanished, a few pit-holes and heaps 
of straw." This was the gospel of Jesus two thou- 
sand years ago. Christmas day is the festival 
of optimism. 

Although there are still great evils which have 
not been subdued, and the optimist is not blind 
to them, yet he is full of hope. Despondency has 
no place in his creed, for he believes in the imper- 
ishable righteousness of God and the dignity of 
man. History records man's triumphant ascent. 
Each halt in his progress has been but a pause 
before a mighty leap forward. The time is not 
out of joint. 

As I stand in the sunshine of a sincere and 
earnest optimism, my imagination " paints yet 
more glorious triumphs on the cloud-curtain of 
the future." Out of the fierce struggle and tur- 
moil of contending systems and powers I see a 
brighter spiritual era slowly emerge — an era in 
which there shall be no England, no France, no 
Germany, no America, no this people or that, but 
one family, the human race; one law, peace; one 
need, harmony; one means, labor; one taskmaster, 
God. 

If I should try to say anew the creed of the 
optimist, I should say something like this : " I 
believe in God, I believe in man, I believe in the 
power of the spirit. I believe it is a sacred duty 

[ 268 ] 



Messages to Youth 

to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the 
tongue from any unhappy word against God's 
world, because no man has any right to complain 
of a universe which God made good, and which 
thousands of men have striven to keep good. I 
believe we should so act that we may draw nearer 
and more near the age when no man shall live 
at ease while another suffers." These are the arti- 
cles of my faith, and there is yet another on which 
all depends — to bear this faith above every tem- 
pest which overfloods it, and to make it a prin- 
ciple in disaster and through affliction. Optimism 
is the harmony between man's spirit and the spirit 
of God pronouncing His works good. 

— From Optimism, With the consent of the author and 
of the publishers^ Thomas G. Crowell Company. 



PRACTICAL DAY DREAMS 

Homer H. Cooper, Superintendent , Spiceland 
Academy 

The high school student is an idealist. To a 
great degree all students are day dreamers. The 
air castles they build are of wonderful influence 
in determining their characters and even the des- 
tiny of a nation. 

[ 269] 



Right Living 

One young man dreams daily of the glory of 
riches. If he has energy and ability it will not 
be difficult to foretell his future. One student 
creates for himself a kingdom of great power 
and influence, it may be in the realm of politics, 
of music, of social rank, of athletics, or in the 
line of some professional life. This indefinite goal 
he tries to reach and his own life is enriched by 
his efforts. Another student has his dream of 
home, of common toil, of the glad and simple life 
that is to him near to nature's heart.. This one 
is striving for the practical realization of the 
duties of life. 

Each one of these students in thinking, plan- 
ning, and building toward the one great aim, like 
Ernest in The Great Stone Face, embodies in him- 
self the reward of years of thought. It is more 
true than we realize that " as a man thinketh so 
shall he be." 

As a nation is made up of these many dreamers 
it is easy to realize how our air castles influence 
the destiny of a nation, politically or religiously. 
As the thought precedes the action, so the nature 
of our thinking determines the nobility of our con- 
duct. 



One thing I hold to be grandly true 
That a noble deed is a step toward God. 
[270] 



Messages to Youth 

In the ideals of the youth of all lands we may 
readily trace the nation's strength and weakness. 
The Indian boy imitates his hero and thus a whole 
race of savages slowly reaches a higher plane in 
civilization. Ages ago the Persian boy in devel- 
oping his ideal of riding the horse and of speaking 
the truth made his nation strong. Too soon the 
day dreams of the Oriental extravagance over- 
threw the country, but what was good in thought 
lived on. Along another line was the daily thought 
of the Greek boy. This was of his Greek games 
and the contests in athletics as well as in art and 
literature. Imperishable to the world was the 
gift of the appreciation of beautiful things. 

With the rise and fall of nations, as the cen- 
turies passed, the worthy thoughts and ideals 
were added forever to the world's progress while 
unworthy ones brought destruction to the hopes of 
strong people. Providence, however, was grad- 
ually lifting the human race. 

But I doubt not through the ages one increasing pur- 
pose runs^ 

And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process 
of the suns. 

The ideals of the past have constantly drawn man 
upward. We realize in history that: 

They must upward still and onward. 
Who would keep abreast of truth. 
[271] 



Bight Living 

Today we are reaping the fruit of the good of 
the past and at the same time we are sowing for 
the harvest of the future. Our ideals, our dreams, 
are supposed to be more worthy than those of our 
fathers. 

It is necessary that we conform to the ideals of 
both thinking and doing. 

Whene'er a noble deed is wrought. 
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought. 
Our hearts, in glad surprise 
To higher levels rise. 

We look into the past and see how foolish was 
the thought of one who, over two thousand years 
ago, sighed because there were no more worlds 
to conquer. Today we realize that we have barely 
started in the greatest voyages to the unknown 
realms. We are creating new ideals of heroism and 
many heroes of the past are fallen idols. Few 
people of today have anything but condemnation 
for the over-exalted Napoleon, " the habitual liar," 
as Dr. Jenks calls him. The present age is one 
in which military heroes of former days must have 
elements of character besides those manifested in 
the spirit of conquest if the name is to be remem- 
bered for good. This means that our present ideal 
hero is one of great courage and power in the 
realms of peace and truth. Even in the day dreams 

[272] 



Messages to Youth 

of today we realize the progressive spirit that 
is controlling our country's future. The problems 
of the future are those of intellect, and the student 
best prepared for the victory of tomorrow is the 
one whose hand and heart aid his head in the un- 
derstanding of truth. He who best understands 
truth will be the hero of future ages, and will draw 
all men to him. This in one way explains the 
eternal heroism of Christ, whom we call " the way, 
the truth, and the life," 

Our high school students in their dreams of 
today are idealizing ways and words, life and 
conduct, of those who most nearly conform to this 
higher conception of the beauty and duty of life. 
This is well illustrated in the school room. The 
young men and women of greatest power are those 
of clean habits, of courteous conduct, of simple 
life, and noble ideals. 

Non-school heroes are those battling unselfishly 
for reforms that conform to the standard of truth 
regardless of temporary policy. The reform move- 
ments of this day illustrate this intense struggle 
to achieve many of our earnest and practical ideals. 
This will help explain the growing hostility to our 
tariff system. When it is realized that it is neither 
scientific nor Christian, its days will be numbered. 
With its passing, the world will have taken a great 
step toward advancing the brotherhood of man. 

[278] 



Might Ldtmg ' 

Our young people will dream of the time when 
health and life shall be better preserved. There 
will be the demand that cleanliness exterminate 
the fly and other injurious forms of life. In this 
ideal will come the demand for temperance and 
the prevention of all those things that shorten or 
degrade life. There will be the effort to keep in 
proper control all those things that tend to pre- 
serve the strength of the body as well as the pur- 
ity of the heart. 

As never before in the world's history our young 
people, who have been taught the evils of slavery, 
are bitterly resenting the white slave traffic as one 
of the most degrading of crimes. The spirit of 
justice, of chivalry, of righteousness, awakened 
in our young people will destroy this evil though 
the cost in money and suffering be unmeasured by 
former wars. The ideals, the dreams, of our youth 
are conquering forces. 

With the passing of the military hero our young 
people will demand that war itself shall be no 
more. The duel of individuals and the wars of 
nations will be classed together as relics of an 
undeveloped civilization. Is it not strange that 
our country in a time of peace spends more money 
every year for war than it does for education, and 
that we seemingly prefer the battleship to the 
well endowed college? Our students realizing this 

[ 274 ] 



Messages to Youth 

will demand that this foolishness cease. They may 
live to see the day when 

The battle flags are furled 

In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the 
world. 

Many are the dreams of the student of today. 
He no longer follows implicitly the heroes of olden 
times, whether an Alexander the Great, or the 
Abraham of the Bible. He is learning more of 
the truth and beauty in the bird and the flower, 
the star and the dewdrop. He demands fairness 
to his opponents in athletic contests. He is in- 
spired by the masters of music and by the beauti- 
ful in art. He believes that all true work is holy 
and acts accordingly. As never before he is ideal- 
izing the reciprocal nature and advantages of true 
and abiding friendship. An optimist himself, he 
gladdens life wherever he goes. He is idealizing 
right things because they are right. Right to 
him means the simple term of righteousness. In 
the hero of righteousness, then, our young people 
will see the great ideal of the dreams of the pres- 
ent and the future. It is thus with a practical 
hope that our young people look forward to the 
time when love, as the new and great commandment, 
shall be the controlling element in the conscience 
of man and the guiding principle of every nation. 

[275] 



Right Ldving v 

This is not impractical. It is the definite, prac- 
tical goal of centuries of progress. 

Whether our day dreams are of the worship 
up in the mountains or of the service down in the 
valley we are a part of that world wide current 
which sweeps ever onward towards that more per- 
fect day. Fortunate is he who conforms his life 
to this current controlled by the physical and spir- 
itual laws of the universe. In our ideals, in our 
day dreams, we are planning, we are living not 
for some vague *' Beautiful Isle of Somewhere," 
but as practical coworkers together with God we 
are creating here and now a new self, a new world 
— a kingdom of heaven that lies within us. 



THE END 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Pari( Drive 
Cranberry Townshio, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



